


This Lonely House

by tourdefierce



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Mommy Issues, Origins, Rape/Non-con References, Romance, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tourdefierce/pseuds/tourdefierce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>so i wait for you like a lonely house<br/>till you will see me again and live in<br/>me. till then my windows ache</i>-- Pablo Neruda</p><p>Life is not full of grand gestures. Life is not full of dramatic exists and entrances or perfect camera angles or explosions. Life for someone like Arthur, is like constantly feeling like a secondary character in his own storyline. That's not anyone's fault but his own because Arthur is Arthur, a protagonist here (and probably an antagonist as well because he can be). This is a story about Arthur, who happens to love people and who happens not to love them. But the point is, this is a story about Arthur who doesn't know it's a story about him. This is story about finding out what it means to be a hero to the right people, what it means to know yourself and, by accident, to let other people learn to know how to love you. </p><p>Arthur is figuring his shit out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Lonely House

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Inception_Bang. Art can be found: [HERE](http://osaki-nana-707.livejournal.com/44112.html) by Osaki-Nana-707. 
> 
> I feel like I've been writing this story for years but that is because I have been doing exactly that. Bits and pieces have been written over the last two years and I'm so happy to be finished with it. As always, samsamtastic has been a rock for me, allowing me to throw drafts at her and bounce ideas off of her—she's patient and amazing and I will never deserve her attention. The lovely fitz_y beta'd this extremely throughly and made sure that the sharp edges of this story blended in with the rounded ones. I can't thank her enough for her attention to detail and amazing ability to see right through me. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

The first time Arthur meets Cobb's projection of Mal, she rips open his chest with her bare hands and eats his heart. He remembers in vivid detail—the way her tiny hands tear at his waist coat, the fabric catching on her nails before they sink into his flesh. Amazingly, she burrows straight down to where his thin ribs come together in the smooth and silky line of his sternum.

See, that's the thing about Cobb's projection. She's little bits of truth and fiction. Looking back, it's remarkably easy to tell how un-Mal she truly is. The mind holds onto guilt and love in ways that the heart only dreams of—in ways that the heart only wishes never existed. 

She's only a shade. She's simply a whisper of what Mal was to Cobb and nothing to what she actually was in reality or what she was to Arthur. 

And Arthur knows. He _knows_.

Mal always kept her nails short and her cuticles smooth.

He remembers doing nothing but holding her face between his hands, cradling the smooth expanse of her cheeks in awe as she digs up and into his fleshy heart, his bones feeling brittle as she shatters them with dream-like strength. He remembers gasping in pain that bleeds into ecstasy. He remembers how at ease she seemed. For the millisecond he was still in the dream, her perfectly straight teeth sunk into his heart with a squelching sound, and he loved her, fiercely. 

He remembers the way Dom watched. 

He remembers everything about the too-look of his blood smeared and dripping off her mouth—everything about her shit posture and her stupidly long fingernails and scratchy cuticles—he remembers it all except what she is saying. For some reason, his subconscious won't let him access that detail but he can't imagine it being any worse than the rest—her teeth, sticky and sharp in contrast with her blank eyes. _Oh, Mal_.

Mon chéri, indeed.

<3<3<3

"Does she do that often?"

Dom's still gasping for breath when he comes out of the dreamscape and Arthur's voice sounds too calm, even for him. He's staring at the pile of vomit by his recliner that he knows is his although he honestly can't remember throwing up. He knows where he is, how he got there—the shitty lawnchair with the broken bottom that threatened to dump him to the floor when he first sat down. He palms his pocket for a moment, eyes still locked on the vomit but he takes his hands away. He's too afraid to check his totem because he's not sure what he wants the answer to be. 

"Oh fuck, I'm sorry-" Dom whispers crawling into Arthur's space, ignoring the creak of the chair and that fact that Arthur hates to have his space violated,particularly by this blithering idiot, and putting his hand over the place that Mal had claimed him. Dom looks like he's watching it happen all over again, this time active and aching with the shock and horror and longing flashing across his face. He looks possessed but definitely not sorry—more like, he's sorry Arthur was there because Dom likes secrets more than Arthur ever did and he loves Mal in a way that says, _I would keep her all to myself because I don't want her touching you at all, even to rip you apart_.

Dom is ever so charming like that. 

If Arthur's closes his eyes, he's sure he can still feel her fingernails catch on the lie. 

He doesn't close his eyes though. He stares at the puke and ignores the way Dom falls apart all over him, crying and shaking and whispering apologies as if they mean anything—as if they could bring her back or fix this truly outrageous situation they've found themselves in. This fucking _farce_.

If Arthur's honest with himself, he has to wonder: Is he angry that Dom's taking chances with their lives and dredging up the painful reminder, the sagging hole that Mal has left behind, or is he angry that Dom can't get her right?

"I don't want your apologies," Arthur finds himself saying and he doesn't wince when Dom flinches at his coldness. 

Mal never flinched away from him. Never once, even when he was at his cruelest.

"What do you want, Arthur?" 

Arthur looks at Dom's eyes, dark and tortured and _screaming_ with repentance and then he looks back at the puke. 

"Answer my questions." 

And he does.

<3<3<3

Ariadne is young and stupid but talented.

He lets her think she's the only one who's got Dom's number and so does Dom because it's easier than admitting that they've been living a similar nightmare since Mal went and jumped. Dom doesn't go anywhere Arthur hasn't already been. 

Sharing memories is nothing like sharing dreams. 

Sometimes, Arthur leaves Dom to stare at the backs of his children and goes down, down until the cream carpet of the hotel room him and Mal sits. The wind always blows through the curtains the same way and the smell of hotel clean and perfume is consistent. She's always waiting for him, feet tucked beneath her and Arthur imagines that if she were real, if she were Mal, she would hiss when her heels made indentions into her thighs.

Some memories, they fight—grappling over the broken glass strewn all over the floor and cutting into his leather loafers. Other dreams, they sit and talk.

_"Oh Arthur, you never would have pushed too far."_

_"You don't know that."_

_"This never would have happened if you would have loved me enough."_

_"Enough was never the problem, Mal."_

_"Fuck you, my darling."_

And other times, they simply hold hands and Arthur watches the madness float across her beautiful face until he hands her a gun and lets her shoot him awake.

<3<3<3

He hasn't dreamed since he was sixteen. When he invented the PASIV at fourteen, he had no idea what he was doing, what kind of world he was creating with chemistry sets, small needles and dream theory, but he still dreamt in his normal sleep cycle until he turned sixteen and signed a contract with the government. They shaved his head and never smiled at him unless they wanted something he could give them. After three years of living on the street, Arthur thought anything would be better than the life he was leading.

He was wrong. 

Looking back, the time spent with those faceless men and women was just a training run for the rest of his life. The time spent with them, although certainly a mistake, isn't something that Arthur finds himself regretting. He learned a lot about people, about growing up, about ideals and the message between the lines of his faded copy of The Great Gatsby, stolen from his last foster home. 

After he shared his first dream with a man named Greg, the government pigs slobbering all over him in excitement, he saw the error of his ways. Arthur watched Greg get torn apart by his projections as if human flesh was simply molding clay or wafer-Bible pages from a hotel drawer. 

He never dreamt naturally again. (He wonders if Greg ever did.)

"You're a monster," Greg said after Arthur finally walked away from his projections and jumped off a five story building that looked like the house his parents used to live in before they died. "What have you done?" 

It took Arthur two more years of working for the government before they tried to kill him. He made sure they never regretted that decision more. Of course, that's when he met Mal, with his silencer pointed at her temple and three dead military personnel scattered around him, their blood sticking to the bottom of his tennis shoes.

<3<3<3

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he says as he stares at Mal's bed, nestled comfortably in the Victorian family home that Miles _fucking_ Lefebvre spends his summers at.

But then he thinks about the way that Mal says his name— _Arthur_ —just his first, even though she must have known his full name with her connections and security clearance, when he thinks about that sound, it doesn't seem crazy at all. He can hear her again and again in his mind, her accent shifting over the vowels before the pop-pop of her .22 as she shot the groaning man on his knees, who Arthur had wounded when he'd first walked into the room. He remembers how the small caliber gun had made her hands look large and capable.

Arthur has never been anything but _Arthur_ since. He's not sure he wants to be anything else. When she had said it then, the hot barrel of his gun pressed against her temple, he knew she wasn't thinking of Madonna or Cher or someone equally mundane. 

No, when Mal said his name, she was thinking of God. That's why he went home with her, that's why he lowered his gun and followed her clicking heels out of the facility and to here, where he can practically feel the family memories assaulting the walls—where he is jealous and grateful and young and scared and constantly doing things like showering with his gun. 

He sleeps in the dusty sheets of her family home, watching the news on mute and waiting for his face to appear with some sort of convoluted cover up story to match his military photograph. On Saturdays, for three months, Mal makes him crepes or poached eggs on toast. They listen to opera, mostly Italian because it's Mal's favorite, at appallingly loud decibels and teach each other everything they know and theorize about dream technology. 

Because the theory? Oh yes, it's been around longer than Arthur's been alive. It's why he invented the technology to do something about it because it had just been sitting for so long, begging for someone to stop having so much goddamn imagination and think about it logically—think about it like science and not dreams. 

It's here that he learns to love the dangers in loving a dreamer. Here is where he traces the soft lines of her face and kisses her softly, nothing more than kisses and holding the spindle-like quality of her hands. And it is here that Mal falls in love with him anyway because that's just who she is.

It's like she stares love right in the face and says, _fuck you, you're the only who's doing it wrong and you can't stop me from reinventing you._

He knows that if she loves him then—eighteen years old, hating filth more than he hates what he did for the government, more than himself—if she loves him when he is learning to become a great criminal, a killer and an extortionist, then surely Mal would love him forever. 

The thing about Arthur, even then, is that he's hardly ever wrong.

<3<3<3

"I want the government to pay you large and obscene amounts of money to take my deal instead of Mr. Kruskov's."

Arthur blinks at the man in front of him. He doesn't look like Mal, except for his eyes, bright blue and piercing as if they know exactly what you're thinking and are going to prove you wrong but in the kind sort of way. Mr. Lefebvre is just as mesmerizing as his daughter. Arthur finds himself slightly intimidated by the sheer intelligence coming off this man—in the delicate confidence in his shoulders and his French cuffs. It's all rather embarrassing how star-struck Arthur feels.

"Mr. Lefebvre-"

"Arthur, you must call me Miles," he says kindly and sips champagne with French dignity. 

Arthur hasn't touched his own glass. 

"And you think they'll make this deal with me? After all the people I killed? After what I stole?" The words taste bitter in his mouth. He's never thought of himself as a thief before but it's shockingly true. He gave them his ideas, he gave them his body and his mind without the right to take it back. He stole himself back. He's no better than his time on the street, stealing to get through the day without passing out with hunger. He feels dirty just thinking about it.

He takes a small bottle of sanitizer out of his pocket and cleans his hands. 

"I can't really see them letting you sell your genius to the Russians, even if the Cold War is over, because you Americans can be simpletons but greedy ones, yes? If you make the deal, they'll feel like they've paid you enough hush money that you'll never bother them too much again. The CIA can put you in the success column, while cheerfully moving toward some sort of government regulation on dream technology so they can tax it and make money off it. You'd be, officially, an investment that has paid off well." 

It's hard to suspect Mr. Lefebvre of anything but niceties and scholarship. However, Arthur has thought that before and to his mistake. 

"What will you do with it?" 

Miles look surprised, the expression spreading over his features like a wave. "Mallorie didn't tell you?" 

"I wanted you to," she says from her place leaning against the doorframe. She's speaking to her father but her eyes are glued to Arthur's. 

"I want to build a university." 

Arthur frowns. "Excuse me?" 

Miles smiles and Mal goes to sit next to her father, clasping his hand in her right and sipping champagne with her left.

"A university that specializes in dream technology. We'll teach people how to dream," Miles explains. "We'll do what the filthy American government should have done years ago when they approached you." 

Arthur blinks slowly, his mind wrapping around the concept. 

"It'll be magnificent," Mal says, her voice bursting with hushed excitement and awe. "People will learn to dream, to build in a special kind of architecture—the architecture of pure imagination. This will be turned into a discipline instead of simply a weapon. It's _more_ than that." 

The Lefebvres sip their champagne with stars in their eyes as Arthur stares at the bubbles clinging to the sides of his flute. 

"And what about extraction?" 

"Oh, Mallorie," Miles sighs. "You'd tell him the worst before you'd tell him of the good?"

"I wanted to tell him the truth," she shot back. 

"How can extraction be educational?" 

"Everything has two sides, Arthur. Dreams are neither wholly evil or wholly good. They are just dreams," she says firmly but her eyes are bright. "But there are ways to fight it and those are as profitable and interesting as dreaming itself."

"Fight it?" 

"Your mind does it automatically, Arthur. Your subconscious protects your secrets but mine lets you just walk in and read them as you please," she says, making their dream-experiments seem romantic and not terrifying and a complete invasion of privacy. "Imagine if we could teach people what you do automatically. Imagine what we could _share_ with the world—what we could discover in the folds of the greatest minds of our generation." 

Her lips wrap around the words, soft like phyllo layers pulled flakey and gold out of the oven. He closes his eyes and wishes it were all just a terrible, terrible dream. 

Five days later, Arthur makes a call to a source and the deal to sell dream technology into civilian life begins.

<3<3<3

"They want you to disappear for some time," Mal says, her curls falling into her face, obscuring her eyes from his view.

"So they can file my paper work for being dead?" 

Arthur lies on the floor of the bedroom, pillowed by Mal's lap, watching her hands trail over his arms. The slice of her nail follows the pin-stripe of his lapels. It's a new suit, ordered from the tailor in town, a frail Italian man who yells almost as much as Mal but with the same love of lush fabric and structure as Arthur. The suit itself is gorgeous, silver-gray with depth in the lines, a single breasted jacket with two smooth buttons, paired with a double breasted waist coat that's made of thick wool. It's $6,000 worth of fabric—the first official purchase of his government deal. 

Arthur watches, his chest rising and falling underneath the width of her palms as her fingers toy with the various buttons of his suit. 

"You know how fickle Americans are, my darling." 

He nods distractedly, his eyes darting from her obscured face to her fingertips that have moved from tracing the contours of the buttons to lifting them in and other of their perfectly constructed holes. 

This is a very dangerous game. 

"I've been thinking Vietnam," she says with simple certainty, as if she's honestly curious about his thoughts and feelings over the country. Arthur feels his breath stop and stuttering in his chest because that is not what she means at all. Mal's the sort of woman who can make anywhere romantic—any place in the world as a magical paradise for lovers. 

(Even dreams. Especially dreams.) 

It explains too much about her, her eyes round and asking as if she already knows the answers and dares him to change it. 

His palms, just as slender, fit over her flittering hands. They still slide over the buttons like a trapped insect, batting its wings furiously, even though there is knowledge it's been caught. Arthur watches as her eyes stay diverted, purposely ignoring his own gaze as he tries to meet hers. 

"Mal, you're going to Paris to help Miles with the school," his voice is not murky or unsure. It rings in the sudden stillness of the room and echos around them. 

They both breathe in quiet fury. Everything is here for his taking and he wants to want it. He wants to let her fingers roam where they desire, where she's been _asking_ to go—he wants nothing more than to fly across rice paddies with her and to learn from her in this too, but they are merely bigger than this.

"Mal," he says, squeezing her fingers until she gasps with a puff of air in pain—until she squeezes back. He caresses her fingers, mapping out the tender line of her hands and he hates himself just a little bit more than he thought he ever could. 

"I know this, Arthur," she spits out. 

And that's the end of it.

(The first time Arthur meets Dominick Cobb, he will be stunned because Arthur will struggle in making the connection between himself and Cobb—how she could love them both so fiercely. Later he will think back to this moment and realise that Mal saw the entire world as potential lovers. He will know that she could have loved everyone until they choked, gasping their last breaths by begging her for more. Always for more.) 

Her fingertips resume their gentle and non-invasive exploration. 

They keep breathing.

There is a part of him, the most selfish part, that wants tears or declarations and promises they know they could never keep but he doesn't know how to vocalize that part of himself. He doesn't know if he fully understands what that part truly desires either. 

They are too flawless to acknowledge the parts in themselves that seek destruction. 

Maybe tomorrow, Arthur thinks, maybe tomorrow he'll be able to love Mal as she ought to be loved—not like an exquisite piece of art or admired like the gentle expanse of a marble stature—but worshiped. He knows her heart is elusive to him and that it is not intrinsically connected to her mind. He won't see her settle for what he can give her and ignore the parts of him that he can't give over to her complete sovereignty.

They are simply greater than that. 

"Is it always this difficult?" He hates the scratch of his voice, betraying his youth but Mal smiles, her face leaning down to nuzzle his cheek until he's forced to look at her sad, smiling face. 

"For you, my darling, it must always be," she says in a voice that is soft with understanding and forgiveness. It's a love he'll probably never deserve but one he'll gladly receive from her. 

They stay like that, wrapped up in the space between them before Miles gets in to explain other nuances of the deal Arthur just made.

<3<3<3

Later, he'll wonder if he made a mistake. He'll look back at the five months spent with Mal and wonder if he could have given her everything she deserved, if he could have permitted her to make her own decisions instead of deciding for her on that floor. There are so many things he could have done differently. There are so many things that he thinks he could have given up for her.

Later, he'll think about forgiveness for the mistakes he might have made. He'll blame himself and dreamers. Later, dreamers will haunt him in the ways Mal only wished she could. Later, he'll be convinced he killed her. Later, he'll think love should be admired behind bullet-proof glass. 

Much later, when he's laying in someone else's arms, the curl of something tangible unfurling in the space that is absent between them, he'll know that he didn't doom her but that he delivered her. Besides, Arthur wouldn't have wanted to see her face when he admitted to loving someone else's crepes more than Mal's family recipe. 

Yes, more, my darling.

Yes, differently, my darling.

<3<3<3

They all take the same flight to Heathrow and after much pleading, Mal convinces Arthur to stay in Paris for at least a month. She uses fashion to plead with him and he agrees because of her smile, curled up and defensive in the corners of her mouth like she's a feral cat. Part of him just gives in to the pure desire to see Mal in her favorite city.

So he stays because he's selfish and Mal is all he has to go with the frayed and pathetic pieces of his character.

That's how Arthur spends a month, listening to Mal and Miles sort through students from the top secondary schools across the world. They look at all sorts of students, from architects to theater majors and they argue about every single applicant over wine and expensive pastries. 

Miles rarely wins and no one is surprised. 

There is something about Paris that makes them all breathe more easily, laugh more and stretch their spines. Arthur finds himself growing into the lines he knows he's made to fit. He's discovering himself. He finds that he enjoys white wine over red and sleeping in the nude. He finds that the space around him isn't purely defensive. He stops chewing his fingernails, he learns to take his tea too strong to drink without just a dash of milk and his coffee black. He discovers that he's still a morning person, probably due to his time in the military, but that lying in bed with a cup of coffee is a guilty pleasure he enjoys. 

He feels coltish in these new self discoveries. 

They spend days on shopping sprees that make Arthur dizzy with their sheer decadence. Mal buys dresses as if she is born to do nothing else but wear them. Arthur lets himself smile when he imagines Mal wearing them to teach and making all her students swoon with affection and desire before getting knocked back into reality with her charm, her wit and her fierce intelligence. She directs shopping assistants like a well-tyrant, piling their arms up with cravats, waist coats, trousers and various other pieces of wardrobe that Arthur learns to find comfort in and to _need_ in the same way he needs Mal's reassuring weight next to his. 

Anchors of different weights. 

The careful way a suit sits on his shoulder or cinches at the waist with precision tailoring becomes intoxicating. The controlled shackles of suspenders, waist coats, and structured fabrics help him breath more deeply, feel safer to smooth out his rough edges and find some semblance of control. 

Paris makes Mal smile, even if it is a little sadder, and Arthur feels a reinvented hum in his skin.

<3<3<3

"I know next to nothing about French culture," Arthur starts saying as they round the coroner to where Mal is taking them to eat, "but I'm fairly sure this is considered blasphemous."

(Arthur rarely admits to being uneducated but he that is exactly what he is. Sure, he's intelligent but it's raw and uncultivated. He reads and remembers everything but there are times where if he would dream, he thinks he might dream of what it would be like to go to college. The dream-share business turns out to be full of unsatisfied and truly disgruntled academics as time goes on and it constantly surprises Arthur how uncomfortable their knowledge makes him.) 

Mal and he have spent the day in search of the perfect coat because Mal is worried he's going to end up working in Moscow, trussed up in an appalling parka that only plebeians should wear, they've not found anything to meet Mal's demands and Arthur tastes. Instead, they've purchased at least three plaid waist coats, a tartan dress, astronomically expensive boxer briefs and two pairs of suspenders. Twenty minutes ago, Arthur had cried for sustenance and Mal had ignored her father's phone calls to meet them at a highly rated traditional French restaurant in favor of this place, which held _charm_ and _passion_. 

Mal clutches his arm, pressed tightly to him as they stroll down the alley and laughs. "Please Arthur, you speak fairly fluent French. You know more than you think about my wonderful people." 

"Being able to ask where the restroom is located can hardly be construed as _fairly fluent,_ you insane woman." 

Mal's been in the US for three years and when they walk into the tiny, fragrant restaurant, at least three well-women greet her with kisses and exclamations that Arthur can barely understand. Creole, as it turns out, is Mal's favorite ounce of Frenchness and this hole-in-the-wall is the best kept secret of Paris. 

They eat tiny cups of jambalaya for appetizers, while Mal catches up with the friendly women who work there. They speak in a dialect that Arthur can barely keep up with but he's more than a little taken aback at the smooth expanse of their dark skin, their confidence and their _kindness_ to pay attention to what they're saying. The women chatter away and when the first course arrives, Arthur has yet to see anything that looks like a menu. 

Tiny cups of red beans and rice follow. They drink from stemless wine glasses that hold what could charitably be described as _hooch_ and their cheeks redden as much from the homemade booze as they do from the unique spice of the food. 

"That is not shrimp." 

Mal booms with laughter and the nearest French woman claps her hands, kisses his cheeks and murmurs what sound like endearments to him but could very well be curses.

"Crawfish!" 

Arthur looks back to Mal and she smiles. "Crawfish, they are like shrimp and lobsters made love." 

"It disturbs me that you make crustaceans sound romantic." 

The room booms with more boisterous laughter and Arthur is taught how to suck the brains out of the seafood creature in front of him and pull the tail from its curling shell. When he licks his fingers, the sauce sets his mouth on fire, much to the delight of Mal's grinning face. 

For the main course, the ladies disappear after they bring them two huge portions of fettuccine alfredo in the style of the French colonial America—cajun. The flavor explodes in his mouth and Arthur finds the cream sauce heavy with smoked sausage, lamb and pheasant. It's the strongest flavor he's had since he's been in Paris and he's quickly in love with the quirky but undeniably fabulous food. 

Later, over beignets so hot and swollen that the tips of his fingers burn, the women talk about their home and Arthur is so full he's sure he's going to pop a button on his new suit. 

"What?" Mal is looking at him. 

"She says," with a nod to the woman devouring a beignet in an oddly elegant gesture, "that parts of Louisiana are still under Napoleonic rule." 

"And?" 

"That's why they are the best French people, she says. Napoleonic rule and cajun spice," Mal says with laughter in her voice and a smile that reassures him that not only will they find him a fashionable coat but that they won't lose each other. The absence of sadness, just the traces of which had infiltrated her since they arrived in Paris, is such a clear relief that Arthur almost wants to kiss these three beautiful Creole women. He settles for leaning over to kiss everyone’s cheeks, praising them in hooch-laced-French and eats another hot beignet.

They go there twice a week for the rest of his stay.

<3<3<3

The third week he's there, he buys a flat.

It's huge and dusty with age but within walking distance of the Creole restaurant and a local bookstore that adds to the historical charm of the spacious apartment. He can see himself spending time there, waxing the expanse of original hardwood flooring or striping the grime from the window panes. Part of its charm lies in the sturdy bookshelves built into the structure of the main living area. 

This would soon be the place where Arthur will have Dom send updates on the children, where he'll send antiques he finds when on the job and where he decides to live when he finally comes home—back to France—after inception belongs on his resume, after learning to forget or forgive or a number of things that he thought he knew before he left.

It'll be the place he finally builds a home. He'll fill up the library. He'll have a place to put his stuff and maybe someone else's as well. He'll start taking more legal jobs in this apartment. He'll never kill a single person or hook up a PASIV to anyone's arm in the confines of this place. This home will represent something completely different than the other properties he owns around the world because although he'll work inside of it, it won't be a convenient warehouse to set up camp in. 

He won't be back to this apartment, even if he's in Paris, for at least ten years.

<3<3<3

There is no goodbye. Arthur is approached in the stacks of a library for a job. It's a good deal of money just to teach two people what dream technology has to offer. The man is nice and his background checks out, even the single blip on his financial records ends up being nothing but an elderly relative dying.

He spends the evening tracing the lettering of the gentleman's card. 

The next day, Mal goes to the school to meet a group of prospective students. They have plans to start a small amount of classes for spring semester, just a trial really, but it excites Mal enough to make her dedicated—it focuses her. It also gives Arthur time to think without her voice coloring his decisions.

He makes a few phone calls to the small connections he has and drinks a fair amount of espresso. He meets Mal for lunch near the school and afterwards, he buys two carrying cases for his suits and stashes the ones he can't carry in his secret apartment. They contrast beautifully in the stripped and tattered closet and he wonders, if only for a few seconds, if he could just stay here forever. In the end, he traces the surface until he gets a splinter and then he leaves. The rest of the afternoon is spent making other necessary arrangements; an old but mean Frenchwoman to look in on his apartment, a safety deposit box, a stop on his mail, a plane ticket to Palermo and two letters for Mal. 

He leaves little trace of his stay in Paris but he misses the smell of Mal's perfume before he makes it to the airport. He wants to feel young instead of just being young. He wants to be the name on his passport, Henry Jacobs, instead of pretending. 

Or something.

<3<3<3

After the first job, they all blend together. Someone always knows someone who wants something and has plenty of money to get it. He tries not to answer Mal's phone calls because it makes his chest ache and when he closes his eyes he can still see her smiling.

Instead, Arthur builds up his weapons collection, which in turn helps him make connections that frequently lead him to more jobs. Arms dealers turn out to be the evolving sort of criminals, always up to date with technology and intrinsically linked with military all over the world. He occasionally meets people he recognizes from the military and there are a few seconds where their brow crinkles in confusion before it flickers to fear and then some other carefully blank expression. He'd be lying if he denied enjoying these moments of recognition because he's supposed to dead for some of them, for others his name is a whispered myth passed around high security clearance areasand then there are those who only think he's a liar. When he's not working or emptying clips into targets, he runs to burn off energy or dresses in slightly more casual clothes and slips out of his hotel-room to find the nearest queer district. 

There are times when the hot lights make sense, when warm bodies equate to warm hearts and warm beds with slick kisses. Other times, he empties out his hotel-room closet and sits on the floor of it, nudging it shut with his feet until the light is drowned out from the room and peeks in at the gap on the floor. He used to do it when he was at the foster homes, desperate for silence and a place to disappear for a while. He spent a fair amount of his military time slipping into supply closets. Now, he sits in the bottom of hotel-closets and calls Mal. 

It's not tragic. It's not childish. It is what it is. 

Not surprisingly, Mal doesn't bat a single eyelash at Arthur's absence. She acts as if he's on vacation, trying to guess his location and warning him off this or that—mostly seedy clubs and over-rated restaurants. There doesn't seem to be a hint of sadness in the pitch of her voice or the easy way she laughs at Arthur's clipped tones. She's almost _gentle_ with him. It throws him off kilter some nights and he snarls into the silences, pressing his hands up against the walls of the hotel-closet and wishing they weren't unyielding, but soft and giving flesh. Other nights, he listens to her, the way she builds Paris through the phone connections, and lives inside these waking dreams. Some nights, he's content in the space she constructs for him. 

He breaks into dreamers like Mal; kills women who look like her; teaches women who think like her—none of them are her. 

The difference is that he knows it. He understands that they are only living projections of her. They are not real. They are not her.

<3<3<3

Later, he and Ariadne will get out of their minds wasted and share their virginitt stories. He'll slurring as he tells her about his firsts, all in dingy nightclubs, losing all types of virginities to faceless men who smelled good and wanted him fiercely.

Later, he'll try and forget the way his grin slid off his face when she looked at him, drunkenness no match for the pity written all over her face. 

There are things that people miss out on when they have an unconventional childhood. Arthur doesn't mourn the loss of it because everyone around him does it enough that he already feels like it's been done. Just because all his first sexual experiences happened with strangers and not in his childhood bed with his parents just on the other side of the house doesn't make him less of a person now. 

He doesn't get it. 

But then again, he's never met anyone in his adulthood that he wanted to spend more than a night with.

<3<3<3

It's summer in Mexico City and it feels like the city is about to catch fire from the heat, but then again, Arthur is convinced it's always an atrociously high temperature. (It is becoming clear that globally, no matter where Arthur is, the weather is always against him.) It's been a little over six months since he last saw the skies of Paris and the world of dream technology is already miles from its beginning. The underground is growing and Arthur finds himself drifting from job to job, sometimes he's teaching (curious millionaires and intelligent criminals) but other times he's playing with extraction to learn the world he's built.

He's teaching a criminal named Nash, who has an abandoned architect degree in his back pocket and an impressive heist record, when his cell phone rings from an unknown number. He wouldn't normally answer unrelated calls on a job but Nash is an asshole and Arthur has no problem making him wait. 

"Yes?" Arthur answers, turning slightly away from Nash's curious face. 

"Arthur, my darling, I'm dreadfully bored." 

He fights the smile and gestures to Nash, slipping away from him and walking out of the small abandoned factory they are working in. 

"Mal, you know I'm working." 

"It's just that I need to solidify some plans to see you before I go mad," her voice floats across the line with familiar peaks and pitches. 

"I should be done with Nash before the week is out," Arthur says carefully. "What does your schedule look like?" 

"I'm holding a seminar now, just for another two weeks."

Arthur sighs. "Mal-"

"Please come talk," she cuts in. "Everyone here is a dreadful batch of dreamers, just like me and there is no one here to keep us in line. It's chaos. It's madness! I haven't had a proper laugh in months, no one here is nearly as beautiful as the two of us and the man that just offered to tup me was actually wearing tweed." 

"I fucking hate-"

"Oh please don't deny me this, my darling. It's been too long and if I don't see your shoulders in this new Dunhill I bought you, I may very well _perish_." 

Unadulterated pleasure shoots up his spine from the combination of the suit, undoubtedly fabulous, and the level of need in her voice. "Will I have to do a dreamscape workshop?" 

"Not at all. My father has some American doing that, he's rather good even though you'd hate him—even I hate him a bit. I want you to come in to talk about the criminal world." 

"Mal," he snaps. "I can't lose business just because you want to piss off your father." 

"Nothing too detailed, just about the art of extraction. I'll pay you just as much as those thug criminals pay you," her voice is teasing but he knows she doesn't love the work he does in the underground, or the fact that all his suits are tailored to conceal the weapons he carries on his person at all times. (It turns out that weapons are just as sleek and addictive as expensive suits.) Mal likes the idea, the scholarship of extraction, but not necessarily the realities it has become since the discussion in the kitchen not that long ago. 

"Alright then," he caves, mentally rearranging his tentative schedule. "I'll meet you at the school as early as Saturday." 

Her squeal of gratitude is loud but pure and he can't help but smile, knowing full well that she can tell that that's exactly what he's doing. The level of manipulation between them is stupid but at least they are fully conscious of it.

"Goodbye, Mal." 

"I love you, my darling."

<3<3<3

Mal neglects to tell him that the American dreamer she mentioned at the conference is also her boyfriend until he's neck deep in serious trouble in the heart of St. Petersburg, three months later.

Text from **Mal** :  
 _My darling, don't be angry but I think I might be dating someone—possibly engaged._

Text from **Mal** :  
 _Oh I knew you'd be angry. I'm terribly sorry I didn't tell you. Forgive me._

He reads these while Sanchez, a jewel thief turned extractor, is digging a bullet out of his shoulder. He's fairly sure they only have a few more hours before they need to get the hell out of Russia or suffer more bullet wounds and possibly an onslaught of a much more creative Stalin regime—he's unclear how much trouble they are actually in and how much is just a result of his bullet wound. Arthur is unsure which makes him angrier, Sanchez' finger jabbing his mutilated flesh, or Mal's passive aggressive texts.

Text to **Mal** :  
Busy. We will talk about this.

Text from **Mal** :  
I'm moving to America to start a sister university. 

"What the fuck!"

Behind him, Sanchez apologizes but Arthur is too distracted to notice that the Spaniard is making a mess of a fairly clean wound. He's in the middle of his own text to Mal when another message causes his phone to vibrate. The white noise that takes over, buzzing through his ears and making his brain fuzzy, could very well be the bullet wound but it's all highly unlikely. 

Text from **Mal** :  
I also might be pregnant. 

"Fuck," Arthur screams when Sanchez practically puts his entire hand inside of his shoulder, masticating his muscle and ruining his mood.

<3<3<3

He's standing in the doorway of her classroom forty-eight hours later, dried blood covering more than half his body and scaring her students, when he finally gets a chance to respond,having lost his phone in a snow drift or some sort of looming fog.

(When asked later, Arthur will compare his life to the Petersburg Chronotope and curse nineteenth-writers for predicting such a shitty future.) 

"I have a bullet hole in my shoulder but that will not stop me from dismantling someone," he announces to a class of forty students and Mal, who looks torn between delight and horrified concern.

"Class, you all remember Mr. Arthur," she says from the front of the classroom before Arthur takes his gun out of the holster and waves it around. Half the class giggles, probably those who've been to his short seminars, the other half books it out of the room, giving Arthur a wide berth. 

"Class dismissed," Mal says gleefully, even though the room is practically devoid of students. 

He waits until the last student leaves before he collapses in the nearest seat and clutches his shoulder. Bullet wounds hurt more than he remembers, but then again, his training was based in dreams. Reality, although Arthur's ultimate fantasy, can sometimes be a bitch.

Mal appears at his side, peeling his jacket off with murmured French and kissing his cheeks before he has a chance to hiss out a curse.

"Oh my darling, what have you done to yourself?" 

"Me?" Arthur feels a vein in his temple throb, partly from the wave of exhaustion that's just hit his gut. "You've got yourself knocked up by that shithead, Dominick Cobb and I'm supposed to worry about a shot to the shoulder?" 

"No sense of self," she says before kissing him full on the mouth and trying to climb into his lap, jostling his wounded shoulder with her hip. "What am I going to do with you?" 

"Mal-"

"I'm not pregnant," she says, looping her arms around his neck and squeezing him. "And please calm down, you're aggravating your wound." 

"Dominick _Cobb_ is aggravating my wound," Arthur grinds out and Mal smiles, wide and lovely, and kisses him again. 

"I knew irrational jealousy would get you in my city." 

"You're such a con-woman."

"Hush, if you work yourself up too much you'll bleed on my new dress."

<3<3<3

Arthur's in Paris for two days before he gets a call from some mob contacts. He often wonders about mobsters and their lives now. He thinks about the glamour of Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz, and how he used to read The Great Gatsby like every American-Dream-chasing fag in hope of finding his own green light or at least, a massive _portfolio_. Surprisingly, those dreams are more real than anything else he could have imagined happening to him so long ago. The US Military is like that, both predictable and unexpected—so are dreams—is Paris.

Mal pouts when he agrees to get on a plane the next day but he ignores her as much as she'll allow. When he gets off the phone from taking a few details, Mal is throwing cutlery in the kitchen while Cobb tries to placate her, simultaneously making her angrier by complaining that she's never this upset when he has to leave. 

"You don't approve," Miles says when Arthur pours himself a tumbler of vodka. 

Miles' face is expressionless and Arthur shrugs, setting himself down next to Miles on the oversized leather couch. It is clear that his and Mal's lives are taking very different directions but that doesn't make Arthur stop _wanting_ and it's something that he's never going to get used to. It's becoming clearer that he can have anything he wants, or at least dream up, and yet, he's still stagnant in his own specific way. 

"He's fine," Arthur settles on, feeling marginal amounts of pity for Cobb at the moment. Miles arches his eyebrow, stillness settling over the house for a few blissful seconds before Mal screeches in French and Cobb makes a truly pathetic sound. Arthur is sure she hit him with a wok. 

"You worry too much," Miles says. "You know she'll never love anyone as much as she loves you." 

Arthur keeps Miles' gaze over his vodka, the sounds of chaos filtering in from the kitchen, until the thin line of Miles' lips turns downward and an all too familiar sadness settles over his face. 

Arthur blinks slowly. "That's what I worry about," he whispers, breaking their eye contact and closing his eyes when Miles laughs. 

Maybe that's where the truth lies, in the intersection between his and Miles' life.

<3<3<3

Cobb goes back to his own apartment in a rage. Arthur pays him little mind as he slips into his jacket and goes to collect Mal, who manages to look both elegant and stunning even after an all out assault of kitchen wares.

"Come out?" 

Her face stays stoney for all of five seconds before she's folding herself into his arms and murmuring in sloppy French. It's mostly endearments but some of them are hurtful words that he knows she feels most of all and that he principally deserves. 

"I just miss you," she whispers into his cheek. "My dear, darling Arthur." 

He holds her for a few seconds, memorizing the feel of her in his arms and the scent of her perfume, before he rights her limp form. His fingers tuck a few strands of errant curls behind her ears and his hand lingers there, threaded in her hair. "I need sweaters," he says and watches her face light up in ripples, like linen settling over a newly made bed.

"Sweaters and etouffee écrevisses?" 

Arthur smiles deliberately wider than the emotion he actually feels. He's rewarded with a kiss on the cheek and Mal slipping into her heels before going to freshen up. 

He books his flight while she's applying blush and doesn't meet Miles' eyes on their way out.

<3<3<3

The next time Mal calls him, he's in New York trying to set up another off-bank account so the bank will stop harassing him about the large amount of money in his savings account. It turns out, having this much money is hard to handle—so is having multiple identities.

"I'm busy," he says, stepping out of his banker's office. Mal's laughter tinkles over the phone. 

"I need you to do me a favor." 

Sentences that start that way hardly ever end without someone trying to kill him. Dream or no. 

"If this is for your government conquest-"

"I thought that was you? Besides, Dom is not a conquest, Arthur. He's my boyfriend—nay, fiancé!" 

Arthur sighs. "I despise him." 

"That is neither here nor there, my darling." 

"Can we talk about this tonight? I'll have some free time to chat after I'm done with this ridiculousness." 

"I'm so glad you asked, I'd love to have a late dinner with you. See you at the hotel at ten!" 

The line’s dead before Arthur realizes he needs to hurry if he wants to make the train. He curses her the entire time and doesn't even bother to ask how she knew he was even in the US, let alone near D.C..

<3<3<3

"Don't order white wine if you're having the steak," Mal mourns from across the table but Arthur does it anyway. Fuck it.

"I'll order whatever I like," Arthur retorts. The restaurant is nice enough that he doesn't get carded, which is convenient since he constantly forgets he's underage.

"You military types-"

"Watch it," Arthur says smoothly, undoing his cufflinks and rolling his sleeves. "What's this favor?" 

Mal looks lovely in the soft light and he suddenly feels like he's missed her. It's overwhelming and shocking, so much so that he can't stop himself from reaching across the table and taking hold of her hand. To her credit, Mal just sighs and brings his knuckles to her mouth, kissing them and holding his hand to her so she can nuzzle into it. 

"I've missed you dreadfully, my darling." 

Arthur says nothing, but he doesn't pull his hand away and for that, Mal gives him a smile so wide and secretive he's afraid he's given everything away. 

"This favor?" He asks again but this time, his voice isn't nearly as cold. 

"A dream within a dream." 

Arthur isn't surprised. He nods, he had been toying with the idea before he left the military and he knows they were watching him closely towards the end. There's no doubt in his mind that they're advancing in their discoveries too. He just knows that he does it better and he's certainly making more money doing it—he even gets to carry his own preferred guns, instead of listening to them whine about the ethics of a child carrying a sidearm.

His uniform is certainly better in the private sector.

"You've thought about it?" 

"I've done it," he says quietly. Mal's eyes widen.

"What was it like? Why didn't you tell me?"

Arthur stares at her wide eyes, seeing the dreamer's curiosity that he has lost. It's something about Mal that he both loves and hates but that he can't help be drawn to when it comes from her. All the other dreamers, _the architects_ , make him sick. How Mal hasn't lost the wonder is beyond him. 

She still dreams, even now. 

"I didn't want you to try it," he says honestly. "You have no self-. You just stick the damn PASIV needle in your arm and off you go, building dreams without consequences." 

Mal tilts her head. "Arthur, dreams have little consequences."

"Don't be naïve," Arthur replies and pulls his hand away. 

"Don't be _fickle_ ," Mal parries back at him. Luckily, the wine comes and they're preoccupied with tasting while Arthur figures out how much he wants to tell her. 

"I've only done it a few times and only with an subconscious."

"How do you wake up?" 

Arthur almost chokes on his wine. "Mal-"

She almost looks guilty and Arthur feels the rolling sickness in his stomach. 

"They've only lost one person but they don't understand why the timer won't wake them," she says quietly, her accent rolling over the words and making them sound so lovely. 

"Jesus fucking Christ-"

"Don't be mad." 

Arthur swallows the rest of his wine and suppresses a shudder. "Is that what you want to know? How to wake people up so you and a bunch of stupid fucking dreamers can go stomping around in a second level, trying to lose your fucking minds?" 

"They're just going to keep trying." 

"They? Is he involved in this?" Arthur hears the tilt and raised level of his voice and lowers it significantly. "Is _Dominick Cobb_ involved?"

Mal doesn't even have the decency to blush. "Don't be the jealous ex-boyfriend, Arthur." 

"Don't sleep with government scum," Arthur grinds out. 

Mal, of course, chooses to ignore him. 

"Dom says the timers don't work. Why don't they work?" 

"It's too deep," Arthur says with a tiredness he feels down in his bones. "You need something more jarring—more physical. You need a kick." 

"A kick?" 

"Usually a physical element in the first level that will make whoever is under fall backward, make gravity pull them awake. Backward into a tub of water almost always does the trick with heavy dreamers." 

"A kick." 

"Yes," Arthur mutters, pouring himself another glass of wine. "So maybe now you'll wake your lost soul up." 

"What's down there?" 

"Depends on the dreamer," he says very carefully. 

"Will you take me?" 

"Absolutely not." 

"Arthur-"

"Not into mine, Mal. Not into mine," he says with such sternness that she doesn't even open her mouth to try a second time. They had to work very hard in the beginning to keep his projections from getting to Mal before they got any exploring done. It took months before his subconscious would ignore her intrusion but even then, it didn't give them much time.

Arthur's still working on taming his subconscious. 

Mal's uncharacteristic silence on the matter is a nice change from the ferocity that she implores when trying to convince him of something asinine. She'd probably use sex if she thought it would work. There's probably some sort of tell that he has that indicates when he can be pushed and when he can't. Mal has always read him like a book, even when others couldn't. 

"Was it bad?" 

"It was... messy." 

"That's a euphemism if I've ever heard one." 

Arthur laughs, remembering the way his projections were killing each other, their eyes wild and full of distrust. "I'm working on it," he says and Mal smiles. "It's even more dangerous and unstable," he says, his jaw twitching. "And it requires a heavier sedative in addition to the customary PASIV chemicals and a synchronized kick just in case. You guys will need better chemists for damn sure." 

Mal hums, her eyes sparkling, and Arthur hates himself just a little bit more. If he didn't tell her, she'd go exploring with her half-witted boyfriend, that Cobb fellow, who might be a genius architect but is just a silly cunt of a dreamer. Arthur hasn't shared more than a few curt words with the man but he's done enough research: two informants in his office and surveillance at his apartment, to know all he needs to know about Mr. Cobb.

Arthur is sure that he only has it in him to love one dreamer. 

"If you won't take me, will you at least draw me up a report," Mal says quietly. 

"They tried to kill me." 

She nods, her hand reaching across the table to clutch his. "I know my darling, but this isn't about you at all. This is about the people they hurt when you let them make mistakes." 

She's right. They both know it. 

The rest of the dinner is spent telling stories that have nothing to do with dreams and Arthur laughs for the first time since the last time he saw her.

<3<3<3

They talk for hours that night. They're drunk with expensive wine and Mal's laughter. He lets her stay in his room, making room for her in this section of his life by letting her gush over the new suit hanging in its travelers case and letting her head settle into his lap. His fingers curl without his permission in the bobbing curls of her hair.

Mal talks about everything they're doing. It's all top secret and Arthur laughs when Mal crawls to her purse and drags out the files themselves. They read and Mal tells stories about Cobb that makes Arthur jealous for something he can't feel for Mal. He loves her. He loves her more than anything but not the way Mr. Cobb can and he hates him for it. 

They talk about levels and limbo, Arthur clutching her tightly against him when she goes starry-eyed and he curses the dreamers, once again, for ever dreaming. Mal rambles on about sedative compounds and Arthur nods in all the right places because this is just the beginning. Dream technology is already leaking into the black market and soon, this time next year, Miles Lefebvre's school for dreamers will have two fully functioning sister schools in D.C. and California.

Mal, naturally, wants him to teach with her. But he's wheedled her down to a tragic four guest appearances a semester and possibly some one--conversation with her best students. These dreams, these are the ones that Arthur can handle because he can imagine her with children staring up at her, enthralled with her beauty and her passion that reflects back in their eyes. He just wishes she had found another passion, like history or knitting, to teach to impressionable kids.

They talk and they dream in real time until Mal finally falls asleep, her eyes moving rapidly behind her eyelids while Arthur tells her about the time he almost didn't come back from exploring level three and knew there was nothing left beyond that but darkness.

<3<3<3

Two months later he writes the report for Mal and sends it off. It has enough detail to satisfy her craving and, hopefully, scare some sense into her. Dream layers are complicated and dangerous with the proper setup of kicks, structured dream-space and chemicals. If anyone is going to be playing around with limbo and three layers with sedative it's going to be Mr. Cobb and not Mal. Arthur might even go to live in Paris, give up the criminal life and his favorite .45 if Cobb gets lost in limbo.

Sweet, sweet dreams. 

He's got a job. It's a simple case of corporate espionage that would be a hell of a lot more simple if he had another person to work on it with. But Mal is _Mal_ and he'd rather get stuck in limbo and face the unknown than be anywhere near Cobb in a personal sense, let alone a professional one. So that leaves just himself because he's still lying low, the game of extraction is newly criminalized with only the richest people digging into their wallets to dabble in such an experimental game. There are only whispers of his name now but he's put some feelers out to see when it breaks. It's actually remarkably hard to get into the social network of criminals, so he works mostly by word of mouth.

He offers the delivery kid a drink laced with sedatives and uses his dreams to do some building. He hides in the kid's shockingly simple mind and puts himself under to explore the second level with ease. His subconscious is getting better about the violence and by that he means it's compartmentalizing itself with an ease of organization and practicality that pleases him. His projections are no longer killing each other out in the open. Instead, there's a warehouse in the center of his dreamscape and the basement is full of ugly projections that beat the shit out of each other. He goes there sometimes. He never understands the way he feels when he does. 

It's rare that his projections are anything to write home about. He once ran into a kid he used to room with in the military and for some bizarre reason, that Arthur is refusing to analyze, they fucked in their old barracks that spring up in the dream. (It wasn't even Billy, which Arthur thinks is the most logical choice but his subconscious didn't, and doesn't, ask him.) A couple of weeks after that, Mal showed up for a couple of minutes but she didn't speak much. However, she touched _everything_ and it was just as annoying in the dreamscape as it was in reality.

But most of the time, his interactions with projections are limited. 

Arthur is changing the parameters of the dream, keeping it simple and then increasing the changes in complexity. His projections glare at him as the changes get more drastic. It's interesting but he's almost bored with it, contemplating trying the third level without a sedative, when Mal shows up. She's dressed in a burgundy dress, barefoot but as projections go, she's quite perfect. 

"What are you doing here?" 

Mal looks at him but doesn't speak, instead she gestures to the PASIV machine sitting in the center of road. Arthur shakes his head.

"I'm not going to the third level with you, Mal. It will collapse anyway, you know that," he says as she traces the brick on the wall beside her. 

Mal cocks her head.

"Besides," Arthur says as the dream shudders around him curiously, "I don't want to go under with a projection. I don't know what it'll do and you know how unstable this level is, let alone my mind's projection. It _shouldn't_ change anything but you can't be sure with the level of separation." 

Mal pouts at him. Arthur lets himself smile a little. "Well," he says, "it's something to experiment with later. Although, I think I'll be picking a different projection." 

She nods, still looking stubborn and petulant like when Arthur refuses to let her order for him when they go out. 

"You can't possibly have that much imagination to spare," Arthur says softly and Mal smiles.

Something's off. It stops him from saying anything about the extra sedative the third level needs because something about this isn't right. He looks at his watch. It's blinking fifteen seconds at him, signaling that the kick he set up in the second level will go off soon. 

"Mal, talk to me," Arthur says with ease and a forced smile. Mal tilts her head and says, "Darling" and that's when Arthur knows it's not Mal. 

This is not his Mal. 

The kick comes and Arthur rides it fast, pushing himself to wake up in the first level. Luckily, the guy next to him is slower to come to and when he does, Arthur shoots him twice in the stomach before tilting his head back and shooting himself. 

He shakes himself, the feeling of getting shot was a hard one to get used to in terms of fast recovery time but he's always had a hard-for violence, carving out a space in catharsis through blood. The delivery boy is still under and the guy he just shot, the _impersonator_ , is lying next to him in the worst clothing choices Arthur has ever had the misfortune of seeing. He scrambles out of his own belt, thankful that he decided to wear one instead of his usual suspenders. He ties the man up with a few tight tugs. The man groans underneath Arthur and for the first time in a long time, Arthur's glad he invented this passage to these alternate universes because it means that no one, _no one_ in the fucking world, is better at this than him. That might change one day but it isn't going to be any day soon. 

He hears words like _extractor_ and _point man_ and _chemist_ and even though they're the government's words—hell, they're Dominick fucking Cobb's words—it's his universe. He doesn't plan on letting anyone forget that. 

He pulls his gun from the dip of his back and settles it to the temple of the man groaning into consciousness. 

"Bloody _fuck_ mate," the English man moans. "I never fancied seeing my insides. Did you ever consider that?" 

"I'm not particularly inclined to give two shits what you want," Arthur says with a coldness that he doesn't feel. This man impersonated Mal—his _Mal_ —and that feels like a violation that Arthur doesn't want to forgive. "Who are you and who sent you?" 

The Englishman is looking down at his stomach like he can't believe his intestine isn't hanging out. Arthur supposes it's pretty amazing to be all put back together after the pain Arthur inflicted in the dream. 

"Who am I? Well chap, I'm Eames and you are the mysterious Arthur," he groans out and then tries to _leer_ from his prone position. Arthur hits him hard enough with the butt of his gun for this Eames to see stars. 

"Fuck! Will you calm down?" 

Arthur wants to set this man on fire and he hasn't truly wanted to kill someone, with the exception of Cobb, outside a dreamscape in a while. "I'm not sure what your objective was by pissing me off but Mal is off-and I want nothing more than to kill you."

"I'd rather you didn't." 

Arthur clicks the safety off. "Who do you work for?" 

"No one, not that I'd tell you anyway," Eames goes on, shaking his head like he's trying to clear away a headache. "Now, be a doll and let me up."

"Mr. Eames, are you lying to me?" 

The man twitches, turning a bit on the bed and looking back at Arthur. "I wouldn't lie to a pretty face like that. I mean, imagine my surprise at finding you so bloody attractive. I'd think a man like you would be a bit older, yeah? But aren't you just a little fantasy waiting to happen, lookin' well under sixteen, don't you?" 

Arthur barely resists the urge to hit him again. Harder. 

"Why'd you break into my dreams?" 

Eames blinks slowly. "What you're doing, it's getting around and I wanted to see if it was true. Two levels? _Three_? And all sorts of lovely complicated mind games that I definitely want in on." 

"This isn't a game," Arthur says and now he feels the déjà vu setting in. "And the only dreamer I let live is Mal, which you must have known or you'd have gone in as yourself. How'd you know? Who the fuck are you?" 

"You have to admit my forgery was aces." 

"Is that what you call yourself, a Forger?" 

Eames does manage a smirk this time. "That's what the Queen calls me. But you and I both know I'm just a thief." 

"Explain to me why I shouldn't shoot you for insolence alone?" 

The delivery boy stirs and Arthur feels a headache coming on. 

"Other than the fact that the take-away man is coming round?"

Eames smiles, wide and ridiculously attractive. Arthur glares because this entire exchange has rattled him more than he wants to admit. 

"Because I'm too gorgeous to die and do you really want to lower yourself to my philistine level by killing me? You might ruin your suit." 

"That is the last time you will try and con me, Mr. Eames. Do I make myself clear?" 

Arthur shoots him in the foot before he can answer, grabs his gear and leaves the Brit to deal with the delivery boy and the blood. He ignores the pressing detail of his erection clearly present from the bulge in his trousers, and after he leaves, he makes sure to send the thief his dry-cleaning bill.

<3<3<3

Miles never gets the wedding he wants for his daughter. There was to be yards of white silk, thousands of dollars spent on slowly dying flowers and handfuls of people flown to Paris, all to see Mal dressed up against beautiful architecture—surely not any of it a rare occurrence by any means, other than the white, which Mal clearly despises. Arthur is glad none of it came to fruition because he doesn't think he could suffer through the entirety of wedding business, from planning to eating cake, and he wouldn't have put it past Mal to put him in a dress. Instead, Mal leaves him a message when he's in Crete working a fairly complicated job with two levels and not nearly enough experienced people.

"Arthur, my darling, I know you're busy being a rugged criminal but I thought you'd like to know that you were right, it turns out straight people are as stupid as you always say. Unfortunately, it's not a little bout of infection but a child. Call me when you're finished. Love you." 

When Arthur returns her call, her phone is off. He calls Miles but doesn't get an answer. Three days later, after more hours spent emptying clips into targets than actually _working_ the mark, Arthur finds a marriage certificate filed for Mallorie Cobb and he freezes her bank accounts out of spite. 

He doesn't return her phone calls for three months, works two jobs a week and sleeps with more people in those three months than he has his entire life. It might be a mid-life crisis,but it's most likely an exorcism.

<3<3<3

He works with Eames a half dozen times after their first meeting. At first, he's an extractor and he's not nearly as incompetent as Arthur suspected. It isn't a piece of information that he's willing to share with the cocky Englishman but it doesn't make it less true. He is, however, just as annoying and undeniably insufferable as their first meeting suggested. He manages to get under everyone's skin, to their delight and misfortune. He has negative respect for people's personal spaces and less than impeccable morals.

He is, as promised, every bit of the thief Arthur's imagined. A charming, gorgeous thief with pornographic lips and the power to elevate Arthur's blood pressure to alarming levels. 

After the first three jobs are completed with ease and only mild amounts of irritation on Arthur's part, heaping amounts of smugness on Eames' (and plenty of sexual tension for both),Arthur recommends him to Michele, a dream shape-shifter or _forger_ , who is certainly better than Eames but has less raw talent. He doesn't tell Eames but he doesn't let himself think about it long enough to analyze the smooth shift of Eames' shoulders or the soft play of a smile on his mouth. Arthur leaves the third job with a curt nod to Eames, who is fingering his suspenders like he knows exactly how pleasantly distracting it is, which he probably does, and Arthur forces himself not to look back when he slides into the cab. 

He doesn't see Eames for a dozen more jobs but when he starts to hear Eames' name being thrown around in putting together a team, he's no longer an extractor.

<3<3<3

"Are you wearing a cravat?"

Arthur continues to read, ignoring Eames as he prattles on about something useless, he's sure. He's still not certain he's retrieved everything from the marks carefully constructed paper trail and tomorrow is their trial run. Surprisingly, Eames' accent is just as soothing as Mal's and it provides perfect background noise for Arthur's concentration—not that he would ever mention this observation to Eames because the Englishman would probably achieve heights of insufferableness never seen before. The thought makes him think of Mal and her swollen belly, complaining to Arthur in the middle of the night about the development of her cankles, Cobb's latest crazy-ass idea or one of the other mundane, beautiful elements of her life that Arthur pretends not to covet desperately.

"Arthur, were you, in fact, Oscar Wilde in a past life?" 

Arthur sighs at Eames' infuriating ability to be so loud when Arthur would rather him just sit around and look pretty. "I didn't know you could read," Arthur says snidely but without effort. "With all the times you demand I draw _diagrams_ , I just assumed you couldn't read the dossiers I leave in your hotel room." 

He highlights a particular transfer account, very inconspicuous in nature but it's the pattern of transfers that gives it away as something more than an insurance payment. Arthur would bet a considerable amount of money that this payment is either to a prostitute with a typical heart of gold or unofficial alimony for an illegitimate child—a 'baby momma' as Eames would say.

"Dear god, you're a poof." 

Arthur looks up from his files to see an honest look of surprise on Eames' features, instead of the teasing look that Arthur expected to see. Something heavy settles in the pit of his stomach but he refuses to be uncomfortable. He's working and this, whatever Eames is doing or thinking, it completely unprofessional. 

"I can't believe I've missed it." 

"Mr. Eames, beside the fact that it is your job to observe people and that you've obviously missed something key about my person, isn't this fairly irrelevant?" 

If Eames picks up on the dangerously sterile quality of Arthur's voice, he doesn't show it. 

"But you-"

Arthur arches an eyebrow in an attempt to warn Eames away from anything he could possibly say but it's useless. Eames has a way of finding trouble even on the simplest of jobs and although Arthur would hate to refer to himself as simple, he thought this particular detail of his character was fairly unconcealed. 

"I can't believe the cravat was what clued you in. How _assuming_ of you," is all he says when Eames blinks and gestures wildly with his hands. 

"But you laugh at me." 

"Yes." 

"I'm charming!" 

Arthur frowns with forced nonchalance. "Your conversational style leaves much to be desired." 

"But I thought you and Mal-"

"This conversation is over," Arthur says with a severity he uses when holding a loaded gun, dream or no, to someone’s head. "I have work to do and clearly, you need practice in gleaning information from outward appearances because you are appallingly dimwitted about it."

Eames' face twists up in an attractive way that Arthur ignores while he packs up the papers he was reading and slips them into his briefcase. "Arthur, don't-"

"If you recall," Arthur says as he snaps his briefcase and slips into his suit jacket, "I will not be conned by you, Mr. Eames. Nor will I ever be pleased at your ability to look at everyone like a fucking mark."

<3<3<3

Arthur doesn't speak a single word to Eames that isn't strictly necessary for the rest of the job. Surprisingly, Eames doesn't push. Arthur stays cold and collected, even down right cruel in some moments, but Eames doesn't say anything. Instead, Arthur finds himself being watched. He'll look up from whatever he's doing to see Eames watching him, brow creased and his expression thoughtful.

He's beautiful and Arthur hates him. 

When Cobb calls him three days later, Arthur almost doesn't answer. Eames doesn't bother to hide his staring, he just sits in the lounger with his legs spread and his body sprawled out in some sort of invitation that Arthur mustn't understand completely. In the moment, Eames' thumb slides across his bottom lip and it's a simple tell that leaves Arthur confused and _wanting_ , feeling so very young that he absolutely has to get out. 

He picks up the phone and stalks out of the warehouse, pretending he's not running—that Eames isn't still watching his cowardly retreat. 

"What do you want?" Arthur barks into the phone. 

"It's happening," comes Cobb's shaky reply and Arthur can feel the panic there. He ends the call and jumps into a taxi, dreams and all that comes with them forgotten in the wake behind him.

<3<3<3

"Why are you crying?"

Arthur stares at the tiny bundle of pink blankets. Phillipa simply screams in response. 

"There is nothing wrong with you!"

Arthur absently notes that the fire-engine red of Phillipa's face clashes with her blanket. Phillipa continues her shrieking in a way that reminds Arthur of Mal when she's drunk. 

"Fucking _Christ_ ," Arthur hisses, shoving a green pacifier into her mouth and pausing, looking at her suddenly still face and waiting for her general refusal but it never comes. She looks pleased and content in his arms, sucking on the pacifier without the smug look that Arthur was expecting from her victory. When he goes to put her down, to make himself a drink and possibly reaffirm his life with porn or a firearm, her tiny hands cling to the lapels of his suit and she makes the most adorable snuffling noises that Arthur has trouble resisting. 

"Moronic breeders," he coos as Phillipa stares lovingly up at him and transfers her hold from his suit to his offered finger.

He completely forgets about his drink.

<3<3<3

Arthur refuses to admit the thing happening between him and Eames is a thing at all. He's convinced that if he ignores it long enough—if he ignores _Eames_ long enough—then the Englishman will get bored. It's just a passing fascination for Eames. Arthur is someone that Eames thought he had pegged and then he went off and surprised him. Now Eames is just hungry for more information because knowing is a drug, more than Foucault ever imagined it to be and Arthur knows it must be so amusing to Eames, watching the young gay boy flounder having been underestimated and now been given his due course. It's true that desire—want—doesn't look good on him, doesn't fit his personality and Arthur knows what a picture he must make. He's a mysterious challenge of conflicting personality traits that Eames wants to dissect. Arthur gets it. But that doesn't stop him from ignoring it because even though it doesn't feel malicious—weight of Eames' stare or the slippery words his mouth offers—knows better.

He's waiting for Eames to get bored so Arthur can stop thinking about him naked. Or something. What the fuck ever. 

Arthur's writing the details of the job on the white board, ready to brief the team, when Eames strolls in. Arthur doesn't bother to turn toward him because when he does, Eames will see it as an invitation to start speaking. Instead, he continues writing down the mark’family ties and enjoys the silence, while taking in Eames' current outfit. 

It's not that Eames' clothes are always dreadful but he has a way of dressing that irritates Arthur in a very specific way. For example, today, Eames is wearing perfectly tailored khaki pants that hug his hips slightly more than necessary and require a lack of underwear to avoid showing fabric wrinkles. Arthur hates khaki on principle but it's hard to hate something that's stretched across Eames' ridiculously round ass and mouth watering thighs the size of tree trunks. His button up is department store and a hideous yellow-tan plaid that would surely make Phillipa cry, but the top two buttons are undone and save the shirt from completely ruining his vision. 

His jacket is tweed, deplorable and musky old but it has elbow pads. It's as if Eames knows that Arthur always wanted to go to college, always wanted to have a professor with graying hair and thick rimmed glasses, who would bend Arthur over in his bookshelf-lined office for a fuck. Paired with his slightly gelled hair and probably brightly colored, clashing socks, Arthur hates him desperately—for dressing like he wants to be undressed by Arthur, like he needs to be _taught_ how to dress and like he knows exactly what his conflicting style does to Arthur's concentration. 

"Pet," Eames says, breaking into Arthur's careful catalog of Eames' wardrobe. "Your white board is looking particularly fetching today." 

"Mr. Eames," he says with a nod. 

"And by white board I am, of course, referring to your arse." 

Arthur feels irritation at the way his mouth twitches in pleasure and so he turns away, walking to where he has to rest of his notes. This, whatever game, is developing between them, is new. Arthur has no idea what the rules are. 

"Let me worship it," Eames says lightly, hovering close enough to be violating but not enough to be lewd—not enough to force Arthur into action. "I'd love to put my face between your cheeks and truly pay homage to its magnificent craft. We do have a bit before the rest of the team gets here. You should let me have a taste." Eames hums, casual and teasing, behind him, and Arthur feels the heat of his breath against his neck. 

Arthur pauses and there are a few moments when he thinks about saying yes, dragging Eames into one of the corners of the warehouse and doing filthy things with him. Because then they would stop with all the flirting, right? They would get over whatever ridiculousness that is growing, much like black mold or anthrax plants, between them and Arthur could move on. He's never had a broken heart but he imagines it can't possibly be as embarrassing as this. 

"Are you adjusting yourself in your pants? Have I gone and given you a stiffy?" 

Arthur's fingers twitch as he reaches to... "You're reaching for your gun, aren't you?" Eames sighs against the back of his neck and then he's gone, the barest hint of a kiss on Arthur's neck, walking back to the white board and whistling. 

Arthur thumbs his holster closed and palms his half-hard cock into submission with carefully controlled breaths.

<3<3<3

Arthur's considering the level of depravity he could potentially reach if he sleeps with this chemist, who can't be older than seventeen (but is it really that wrong when he's so young himself?), when Mal appears and scares him off.

"I was thinking about sleeping with him," Arthur says casually. Mal makes no move to implore tact when she looks the prospective chemist up and down and then shakes her head, waving him off like he's a particularly bothersome insect. Arthur can hardly contain his own amusement. She's right, though, he's kind of... blah. Comparatively, boring people in dreamtech are honestly hard to come by. 

"Why would you sleep with some _student_ , who might be flexible but it won't make up for his premature balding, when you could spend the evening in my arms, bitching about Dom, doting on Phillipa and trying to ignore how utterly fetching I am while you plot to quit your life of crime to whisk me away from my life, abandon dick forever and never leave my side?"

Arthur snaps his briefcase closed. "I can't sit in the same house as Dom on an empty stomach." 

"Very well then," Mal says with a bright smile, taking his arm and leading him out of the lecture hall. "I've been spying on you and I've concluded that you've been holding out on me." 

"I sense danger, I just can't seem to see which direction it'll come from." 

"You didn't tell me about Mr. Eames." 

"I take it back," Arthur moans quietly. "I'd rather fuck the balding kid than endure this torture." 

Mal looks positively _gleeful_.

"I hear he's fit to be ravished." 

Arthur almost stops short. "What does that even mean?" 

"Don't be coy," she says with something that sounds like a giggle. "A tattooed man with a sexy accent, good with fire-arms, is charmed by your bitchy exterior—it sounds like true love." 

"I’d rather spend time with Cobb." 

Mal squeals in delight. "You like him! Oh, I knew it!" 

Arthur palms his holster and his blood pressure stops climbing. 

"It's always the tattoos with you," she continues as they make their way down the steps of the school. "I heard you shot him once." 

"He deserved it." 

"I bet he kept the bullet. He probably sleeps with it underneath his pillow." 

"There is no one, at this very moment, in the world that is safe from the rage I feel." 

Mal laughs. "You say that to all the girls, I know you do, my darling. Now, tell me more about this Mister Eames—is he as ruggedly handsome in person as he is in all the photos where he's drooling over your deliciously clad buttocks?"

"This can't be real life." 

"I saw the photo of the two of you in Prague!"

"I should have you drowned." 

She laughs, curls shaking and eyes in pure delight. "Think of the children," she cries out. 

Arthur snort. "Child. Phillipa is bright but still only one child." 

"I was referring to Dom." 

"Of course."

"Naturally."

<3<3<3

The dream is generally ludicrous. Arthur is wearing a mother-fucking loincloth, which means he's pissed off and has two machetes strapped to his legs. They're _chaffing_.

Eames looks like a sluttier Cleopatra than any of the history books ever suggested, pet tiger included, and Arthur has never hated a mark more. He's afraid he's going to bring his projections in if they don't get this over with quickly. He's not responsible for the carnage when there's a good chance his subconscious hates loincloths just as much as the rest of him. All their trial runs were never this bad, but apparently their architect has a bit more of an imagination than previously assumed. Naturally, Eames looks delighted. 

Twenty minutes later, he's still waiting around and judging the décor when Eames shows back up. 

"Your legs looks fantastic," slutty Cleopatra says in a very manly English accent. 

"Does that mean you've done your damn job?" 

Arthur wants to be bored with this game, telling himself that it gets in the way of the job, but he isn't. As much as he doesn't want to admit to having feelings, let alone for Eames, he does enjoy the banter between the two of them when Eames interjects sexual tension into the most inappropriate moments and Arthur feels his blood pressure rise. Then again, he deliberately takes jobs where a forger might be a possibility and that's a tell all on its own. 

"You're such a saucy little duckling." 

"Surely you've noticed the machetes." 

Eames arches a perfectly plucked black eyebrow. "Darling, your weaponry certainly does bring out your calves and your di-" 

"Get away from me before I lop off something important." 

Eames puckers his lips and makes an obnoxious sound, which snaps something in Arthur so he tries to drown them both in the river. When they all wake up, someone is muttering something about _denial not just being a river in Egypt_ and Arthur leaves, weapons clearly visible, without waiting to make arrangements for a pay out. 

He takes Eames' PASIV with him out of spite.

<3<3<3

Arthur hates stake-outs.

He enjoys finding things out about marks. Research is comforting. Arthur loves the efficiency of making phone calls and hacking databases—there are times when it's even challenging. He doesn't mind tailing people throughout a workday because there is plenty to occupy his interests in terms of information gain about potential opportunities for infiltration. When he's sitting in a car for hours watching the mark read a book, he kind of wants to kill someone or at least make someone bleed for the sheer inefficiency this monotony breeds. 

His cell phone vibrates on the passenger seat. 

"I'm on a stake-out." 

"You sound pleased." 

"I fucking hate stake-outs." 

"I know, my darling. You know what I hate?" 

"Your vapid husband?" Arthur says casually, watching the mark turn a page of his book. Mal's laughter floats easily over the line. 

"Close," she says in a voice that only means trouble for Arthur. He feels uneasy, like that time Eames sent him a package and it turned out to be stalker photos of Arthur eating a pastry without a tie on (which Eames, being Eames, managed to take them in a way that made it look like Arthur was performing fellatio) or when Mal tricked him into going on a date with a man who looked a lot like her father or when she forced him to babysit so that she and Cobb could have a date and there were _diapers_ or ... well, a many number of events in his life that involved Eames or Mal and Arthur's distinct displeasure. 

"What did you do?" 

"I'm with child." 

Arthur's forehead hits the steering wheel, only just missing the horn and encouraging the massive headache he can feel coming on. "What the fuck is wrong with you people?" 

"I know! I know! I'm not sure what's wrong with my contraceptives." 

"I'm not sure what's wrong with your _soul_. I don't understand how this shit happens," Arthur moans into the phone, desperately wishing he was some place he could discharge his firearm. "You hated being pregnant with Phillipa. You begged me to invent a way to transfer the baby to my man-womb! Besides, you told me that you and Cobb weren't sleeping together anymore." 

"We made up." 

"This much is clear." 

Arthur peers up at the mark, who's still reading shit literature and being boring, as he listens to the way Mal rambles on about things that he really doesn't care to hear about. More children? Really? He had been pulling for a divorce or possibly a maiming. 

"I'm still not sure how this happened," Arthur says when Mal takes a breath because he's still stuck on the fact that this is reality and not a convenient nightmare. Mal snorts over the phone and Arthur can picture her face clearly, mocking him and asking forgiveness or advice at the same time. 

"Well, Uncle Arthur, when a man loves a woman or a man loves another man and is a genius, they wrestle under the sheets, making lots of primal noises-"

"Cease and desist," Arthur snaps over the phone. "Also, never use the word _primal_ again—in any context, if you please." 

She sighs. "Dom's happy." 

"He would be." 

"Phillipa is excited," she says, as if she's helping. Arthur snorts. 

"Mal, she thinks I'm really her father, Dominick is a robot and that being an American is like having a disease," Arthur deadpans. "She's clearly not normal." 

"I haven't told Papa yet." 

Arthur smirks because indeed, even the worst scenarios have a small, silver lining. "Miles will be positively ecstatic at the news," Arthur says, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Stop enjoying my pain, merde." 

Arthur looks up from his hands to find the mark staring back at him, this time he's holding a high powered rifle instead of a James Patterson novel. Although this development is certainly more interesting than the novel must be, Arthur finds it problematic, as is everything in this current moment of his life. 

"Mal, my mark is pointing a gun at me," he says into the phone distractedly. "I'm going to have to call you back." 

"Be careful, my darling." 

He hangs up the phone just as shots ring out on the quiet street. Arthur ducks, trying to pull his gun from his holster and get a hold of the shotgun underneath the seat at the same time. Distantly, he thinks about how rude it is to open fire in such a nice neighborhood and how the resale value of the surrounding quaint lots has probably just plummeted. Not everybody enjoys the life of crime as much as the people Arthur knows.

<3<3<3

There are moments when the job is frustrating or when Arthur knows he's missing something crucial but can't step far enough away to see it. In these moments, he takes breaks by changing his mark to do useless but none-the-less satisfying work.

He finds out that Eames' first name is Alistair and that his mother is an honest to god Duchess. This discovery of royalty leads Arthur on a forty-five minute mini tangent to research the hierarchy of English aristocracy, which is fascinating in a way that only makes sense in terms of linking an Honorable Lord and what Arthur knows as _Eames_. However, Arthur is fairly sure madness does run in the royal lineage or incest or old money and it does explain a lot about Eames' eccentricities.

There is relief in the gentle discovery of information. 

Eames, it turns out, isn't the Englishman's real name but actually his grandmother's maiden name. Arthur finds this frustratingly endearing, even more so when he looks up her name and finds the most adorable old lady ever to have lived in England. She even owns Yorkies named Puggles and Meredith. 

After a while, he goes back to whatever case he's working on and this time, the information comes effortlessly on the mark with obstacles between him and the information caving with ease. 

Arthur doesn't think about why.

<3<3<3

Text to **Mal** :  
I can't make it to James' birth.

Text from **Mal** :  
Do you need help? 

Text to **Mal** :  
Nothing I can't handle. Love you.

Forty-five minutes later, Arthur's in a shack in Uganda, tied to a chair and trying to figure out how to get out of this mess alive and failing miserably in finding any sort of a plan that doesn't end up with him dead. Apparently, pregnant women make him sloppy with his work because he's too busy fretting over the best lamaze class in LA and the pros and cons of children growing up without their birth father because ~~if~~ ... **when** he gets out of this alive, he's going to murder Cobb. 

This is all clearly his fault.

<3<3<3

James is born but Arthur isn't there. He isn't there when Phillipa meets her brother, nor when Cobb almost drops little Jamie and Mal screeches so loud that Miles has to assure the police that no one is being murdered, despite all the screaming children, the confused American and a very hormonal Mal.

Arthur misses it all. 

The Uganda Ordeal, which will merit capitalization in Arthur's head for a solid two years, required him to call in two favors. He's upset because he was definitely waiting to call those favors in for something more important but sacrifices had to be made, which is why he's walking into a warehouse in Mombasa instead of stepping inside Mal and Cobb's California dream home. Because Arthur doesn't like to leave debts hanging, because Rene is a bastard without a soul, because, because, because—

"Darling, imagine my surprise in hearing your name from Rene's lips! He's such an absolute cunt and I thought you'd be taking care of your French woman, I hear she's procreating without you again." 

Eames looks frustratingly stunning in a rugged, punch to the gut sort of way as he's _straddling_ a chair backwards and smirking like he's been waiting for Arthur to arrive and bitch. He's not wrong, naturally. 

"I hate this infernal city," Arthur says in reply because he can and he does. "How you manage to live here is beyond me." 

Eames smiles, feral, and Arthur hates himself for wanting to lick at the man's teeth. It's so inconvenient to want Eames but it's worse today, possibly because Eames is right and Arthur is missing Mal so fiercely he thinks a hole might be burning straight into his heart from longing. It could also be because Eames loves Mombasa and Mombasa, the heathen den of heat that it is, loves Eames. 

"Your imagination has always been dismal at best." 

Arthur shoots him a glare because that's what Eames wants. "Where's Rene?" 

"You know," Eames says offhandedly, flexing his arms and drumming his fingers in a very distracting manner over the arch of the chair back. "Rene is too stupid for you to run point for him." 

"Is it always this hot?" Arthur mutters under his breath because this is one of those times that Eames thinks out loud and answers his own questions, much to Arthur's irritation. He'd stop him but he's sweating through his waist coat and it's starting to seriously piss him off. 

"So this must be a favor because the pay off isn't nearly as tantalizing for you to take the job under Rene..." 

Arthur feels Eames' eyes roving all over his body and he's idly aware that he probably has stains from the sweat on his trousers. The cab ride was sweltering. 

Arthur can also feel Eames smirking. "But Rene has been rather tame lately. His only connection is in Uganda and—" 

_Wait for it._

"Jesus bloody Christ!" 

And then Eames is out of the chair and patting Arthur down like it's fucking airport security. He tries to protest, little half sentences come stumbling out of his mouth but it's half-hearted because Eames' hands are wide, blunt and a little chubby but they're strong and sure and intoxicating on his person. 

He isn't _swooning_. He's just having a bad reaction to the heat.

"Fucking hell," Eames exclaims and Arthur can't stop looking at his face, wrinkled with concern and bewilderment. "I heard they chopped off all your fingers and mailed them to your mum." 

"I don't have a mother," is the only thing Arthur can think to say. It doesn't matter because Eames isn't really listening. 

"Did you really escape on an elephant? Because I know it had something to do with an elephant and I'm right jealous." 

It's just inane chatter, Eames' hands running all over him and patting him down. He can't help the wincing because he does look like a victim of domestic violence underneath his suit. The bruises are fading but it only makes them look worse, purpling into yellow and green. The burns are still shiny on his belly and those marks will probably scar. 

Eames is still going on, all rumors about what happened to Arthur spilling out of his mouth. It's only when his fingers discover the still black marks around his wrists that he stops, his mouth slack and his eyes wide. 

"Eames," Arthur hears himself saying. "I'm fine." 

"I'm sure you are by someone's definition but certainly not by mine." 

Arthur wants to say that his definition is the only one that matters but then Eames looks up and all the breath leaves Arthur's chest in one go. Eames' eyes are full of _fear_ and some other emotion that Arthur can't name because he's fairly sure he's unfamiliar with it. Eames holds his gaze for a few long drawn out, breathless minutes before he bends and kisses the inside of Arthur's wrists. 

"You're too young," Eames says into the first wrist, his mouth pillowy and soft against the damaged skin. 

Arthur feels like he's been throat-punched. Eames looks like he's being served communion, something about him breaking in front of Arthur's eyes as he kisses the other wrist and breathes out Arthur's name across the skin. 

When Rene walks into the door, Eames doesn't jump away like Arthur does. He gives Arthur's wrists one final squeeze and gently lets them down to his sides as if he's replacing something precious. Eames gives him a look that seems to say, _we're having a conversation about this later_ but then Rene is talking, Eames is walking across the room and Arthur's thrown back into reality as if the last few moments were nothing but a waking dream.

<3<3<3

In the end, it's Miles who calls him a week later. Arthur's watching Eames have a very explicit and _diagram-_ discussion on fisting when his phone rings. But just as all tragic things occur at the best of times, he knows something is wrong because Miles never calls him.

"Someone fucked up." 

"What happened?" He's out of his seat before he can really understand what's happening. In his mind, he's cataloging Miles' barely subdued tone—anger, yes but there is fear too and that's what makes Arthur's stomach churn. Across the room, Eames' eyes flash toward him and something grinds to a halt. 

"I don't know," Miles says in a hushed voice. "Something went wrong because Mal's not right." 

"Miles," Arthur says, desperation and panic creeping into his voice because he can't feel anything. It's all white noise inside of him. "Miles, I don't know what that means." 

"She's my baby girl, Arthur. She's my baby girl." 

Eames drives Arthur to the airport in a daze because Arthur's praying, something he hasn't done since his parents died. His voice washes over them in the car as his tongue tumbles over thick Hebrew. Eames manages to spend the drive staring at Arthur without killing them but Arthur can't notice. He holds onto Eames' hand and prays. 

It's a blackout period wherein everything felt wrong but nothing, nothing hurts like it's supposed to.

<3<3<3

Three days later, Arthur turns twenty-one with Mal sobbing in his arms. There's day old make-up smeared across her face like ashes and she's trembling.

_They're not my children! They're not my babies._

She won't let Dom touch her. She yells for her mother, long dead, when Miles enters the room and she clings to Arthur's sleeve like he's the only thing bolted to the ground. 

_He lied to me. He doesn't love me. Arthur, Dom doesn't love me like you promised he would._

"Mal, what happened?" 

She stares with too large eyes, out of focus and crazed. She touches his face, her fingernails dirty and smoothing across his feature as if she's reading him like braille and memorizing whatever she finds written there. 

"I miss my Arthur," she whispers. 

He feels so much anger well up inside of him, he wants to kill her. It's a true desire. He could kill her right now for looking at him like that, for rejecting him like that—for refusing to see him as he ought to be seen because that's how she taught him. 

"Mal—" 

_Are you just a projection? Or are you just asleep? We need to wake up. Arthur, my darling, we need to wake up._

"I don't want to wait for the train anymore," she says, clutching at his lapels and shaking him like a rag doll. "Some things matter more than being together. I love him. I love him dearly." 

"Jesus Christ—"

"I hate trains," a second later she says, completely devoid of emotion. "Did you know that my darling?" 

She doesn't sleep and neither does Arthur. Some moments, she's lucid and just quiet in her thoughts or humming softly under her breath and into Arthur's neck. Others, she's screaming at him and nothing makes any sense as she screeches out painful breaths. Outside the bedroom, Arthur can hear Cobb's sobs and they're just as haunted as hers. 

Whatever happened down there, whatever version of Pandora's box they found themselves in, wasn't going to let them out. 

_Wake us up! Arthur, WAKE US UP._

<3<3<3

James is not three months old but Mal refuses to breast feed him, claiming that she will not let this false child suckle from her. Miles mixes formula like every movement is a dreadful weight and his wife, Nina, holds baby James as he cries for his mother and chokes down the formula with clear disdain.

Phillipa is quietly curious. She's still young and mostly unaware but Arthur can see it in her wide blue eyes, not scared like Mal's or tortured like Cobb's, but unwavering curiosity. He wonders what's going through her impossibly clever mind. Nina tends to James like a life-line, scowling at Miles and Cobb as if they are the source of Mal's madness and clinging to James' infant body as if he can save her from falling into this perpetual loop of sadness they've created for themselves. 

Mal has agreed to some rare moments with Cobb and so Arthur's left the bedroom to shower and change into some old sweats of Miles'. He's heading to the living room to watch some TV and try to sleep when he spots her. 

Phillipa is standing in front of the enormous refrigerator, her small body stretched up to reach for something in the door but she's far too small to reach whatever she's looking for. She lets out a small little grunt of frustration, her tiny hand coming down for a moment before it goes back up again to reach. 

"Do you need help?" 

She turns around, looking contemplative. "Mama let you go." 

Conversations with children are a lot like having a conversation with a projection or Eames; they seem to have this uncanny sense of everything adults miss, while simultaneously managing to surprise Arthur every single time a conversation is had. 

"She did," Arthur says, entering the kitchen. "Would you like me to reach something for you?" 

"Yes, please. Milk." 

When Arthur reaches for a glass too, she makes an abortive noise in her throat. "I can do it myself," Phillipa says. She's not unkind or churlish about it but simple and straightforward. 

No wonder she thought she was actually Arthur's child. 

He sits at the breakfast bar and watches her climb on sleek kitchen countertops until she's poured them both glasses of milk. 

"Thank you," he says when he takes the glass. She nods, as if accepting his unnecessary words. 

Silence settles between them. Arthur knows that if he listens hard enough, he could probably hear Mal and Cobb but he doesn't want to know what they're talking about, it will only make him angry. 

"Will she ever be happy again?" 

Phillipa's voice isn't sad, it doesn't droop around its consonants and vowels with childish melancholy. She sounds contemplative and curious. 

Arthur stares at her too wide eyes, the gentle curve of her mouth that looks so much like Mal's and her long, blond hair that could only come from a Cobb. It's hard to lie to her. Why should he? 

"I don't know," he says. 

His voice, on the other hand, does sound sad. 

"Will she die?" 

Arthur frowns. "Why would you ask that?" 

Her small shoulders shrug and she takes a sip of milk, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "Grandpapa says people die from sadness." 

"I'm not sure that's true," Arthur says softly. "What exactly did he say?" 

Phillipa smiles, this time it _is_ full of sorrow, like she can see the future stretched out in front of her and has already cried tears for those she knows will be pulled from her grasp. She puts her hand in his, worming her fingers in between his larger ones with such determination that he feels overwhelmed with déjà vu from their first meeting. 

She looks at their hands, then back up at him. 

"That Mama..." she pauses, clears her throat and finishes in quiet French: 

"Mourir de chagrin." 

Arthur thinks, that if he has never felt heartbreak before then surely it must feel exactly like this. It must be there on the lines of his face because Phillipa squeezes his hand. 

"Do you want to hold me?" 

"What?" 

But Phillipa is already climbing into his lap, arms looped around his neck and nuzzling into his neck. "Grandpapa always says it makes him feel happy to hold me." 

Arthur thinks of Mal and her complete disregard for personal space—how they have been in this position so many times over their years of knowing and loving each other. 

"Thank you," he says because he doesn't know what else to say to this enigma of a girl. 

"Mama used to say you have a heart full of sadness, all the time." 

Arthur closes his eyes. "Did she?" 

"Oh yes, _avoir le coeur gros_ ," she mocks in thick French, sleepy and settling into Arthur's embrace.

"Avoir le coeur gros," Arthur repeats, holding her tighter and kissing the top of her head.

<3<3<3

Six months later and nothing’s changing. They're in a feedback loop of madness and misery that has Arthur quaking to run away from everything.

Phillipa spends most of her time with him when he's not sitting with Mal. 

It's late, way past her bedtime but they're playing tea party with dolls and delicate china because Mal has been yelling. She's torn apart the bedroom and is sitting in a pile of old photographs of her mother. When Arthur had tried to calm her, she had looked right past him and cried for _for the real Arthur_. 

He had stormed out, left her for Cobb because there is only so much of it he can take. 

His phone vibrates on the table top and Arthur looks at Phillipa. "May I check my phone?" 

"It's rude to answer it at the table," she says simply. 

"What if I just look at it?" 

She thinks, then nods and busies herself with pouring them both another cup of tea. 

Text from **Eames** :  
all right? 

Arthur doesn't text back. 

Later, when Phillipa has finally fallen asleep on his chest, Arthur types out a careful message through blood-shot eyes:

Text to **Eames** :  
avoir le coeur gros

<3<3<3

Later, after Mal jumps, she continues to show up in his projections and in the one real dream he's had since he's been in the dream business. She's always silent in the dreams. She's always touching everything but she's quiet and Arthur hates it so much that sometimes he kills her, apologizing over her body before she reappears later. Her face isn't hateful. She isn't mad at him and he cries almost every time.

When he meets Cobb's projection of Mal, his own starts killing herself in every single dreamscape. 

Arthur has absolutely no idea what it means but he knows that if he doesn't save Dom, he'll never forgive himself.

Mal will never forgive him either.

<3<3<3

It's late but it's Arthur's turn to watch her. Lately, it's been more and more like this—quiet and eerily calm, instead of the screaming and crying that the initial episode inspired. There isn't anything to be done about it. He gets a story out of both of them but they don't match up and Arthur is fairly sure that Cobb is leaving something out. He always squints his eyes and looks left when he's lying or deliberately being difficult. But Arthur doesn't push it because it doesn't matter.

No amount of knowledge can bring her back from wherever she's gone. 

She doesn't try and convince them reality is a dream anymore. She just looks at them all sadly, like they're the ones who've gone and lost their minds. She scares the children with her blank looks and coldness, because she's convinced that her children are better. The looks she gives them are cruel and Miles has taken to keeping them away from her as much as possible. 

He's going to take them back to Paris when he goes. He's telling Cobb that it's because he wants them to have a perfect anniversary, to focus on them and not on everything else but Arthur knows the real reason. 

Miles is looking at everything like it's Mal's last. But beyond all of it, Miles is terrified that Mal's sickness is catching. He looks at Arthur with fear, clear and present, in his eyes like Arthur might shoot them all in a fit of conversion. What pisses Arthur off, is that it's the same look Miles gives Cobb. 

His phone rings, jumping across the counter but Arthur lets it ring a little. He watches Mal, who's staring out at the dark sky and singing an Edith Piaf song, the title of which has escaped him. He's never been particularly fond of French pop music but it's something that Mal and Cobb have in common. 

Other than their stupidity. 

He picks up the phone without checking the caller ID. 

"Arthur." 

"Pet, I know you're American but I thought we discussed staying in that infuriating country for longer than a week at a time," Eames' voice comes over the phone. "You know I hate not seeing your lovely scowling face. And don't they hang gays over there?" 

The last part is supposed to make him laugh or scowl or react but Arthur feels nothing. Arthur lets the silence fill up the line and speak for him. Eames is smart and Arthur is so tired of looking at everything he loves and seeing impending doom.

"Arthur—" 

He clears his throat and Mal changes keys. 

"Do you ever think we're dreaming?" 

"I'm afraid I don't follow." 

Arthur stares at the back of Mal's head, as if willing the idea to dislodge itself from her brain and bring her back the way she's supposed to be. He misses her so fiercely that he doesn't know if he'll survive. He wonders if he'll be able to make it after she's gone or if Cobb and he will slowly disintegrate into shades of great men lost to love.

"Do you ever think you'll never wake?" 

Eames makes a murmuring sound over the phone. It's soft and wet but it sounds so fucking good that Arthur feels like crying. 

"Oh darling, everything's gone to shit, hasn't it?" 

Arthur laughs because he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't answer. The sound that comes out of his throat is choked, catching on his teeth and snarling out of him without his permission. It speaks for him as Mal sings on, a little louder now. 

"Do you want me to come?" 

The request is sincere but when Arthur closes his eyes, he can't reconcile Eames with this part of his life. And now that it's all falling apart, he can't imagine letting anyone know that this part of him is so clearly broken and possibly without mend. He thinks about Eames' hands, so capable and talented. He thinks about the lift of his voice and the way he forged Mal so long ago. He thinks until Mal swirls around, looks at him with accusation and knocks the vase on the table over. 

It shatters. Mal smiles, twisted and full of joy or hope at the broken shards of glass—like she wants to roll in it or swallow it all or … 

"Darling, I'm coming to get you." 

"No," Arthur says. "There's nothing to be done." 

He hangs up before he changes his mind.

<3<3<3

There isn't a funeral.

Arthur skips town for a job in Zurich. Eames is there. Other people are there but Arthur can't really see them. Just because Mal's death was foreseeable doesn't make it feel any better—doesn't make Phillipa's face leave Arthur's mind. 

He's in and out of Zurich, barely speaking when spoken to but he gets the job done.

Miles wants Mal buried in Paris, with her mother, but the authorities won't release her body outside of the US until Cobb is extradited to American soil. Miles calls Arthur and he tracks Dominick down in the bowels of dreams. He drags him out by his ear, dries him out and contemplates escorting him to the police himself. 

Instead, he helps him get a job as an extractor. Arthur wonders if he'll ever stop being angry. 

"I've never done this before." 

Arthur's fingers tie the full Windsor by muscle memory and he watches Cobb in the mirror. 

"You've never done an extraction?" 

"Well, yes but … " Cobb says, his palms dragging down his trousers, "I've just never done it illegally before." 

"You'll manage." 

"Yeah?" 

Arthur smoothes out his tie. "You have nothing left to lose."

<3<3<3

Arthur's totem isn't special. There isn't an ounce of sentimentality to the choice. He picks the loaded die because he likes the safety in knowing that life isn't about chance and that he's in control. Roll the die and if it doesn't fall where it's supposed to, then he's not in complete control but death is merely a technicality. If the die falls on the one, then he's in complete control of everything around him. Sometimes, the weight of it inside his pocket is enough.

The top Mal uses is given to her by her father. 

She comes up with the idea after she spends too long in a dream, long before they fell into Limbo—this idea comes from just a scare. Arthur yells himself hoarse, ruins a pair of Dunhill trousers, and almost flies to California to kill her himself. It's too close of a call. It's something that scares him more than anything in the world. Mal is the kind of person who could get lost in dreaming. She has little attachment to reality, not in any meaningful ways and she seems to constantly forget the lines of reality in the faces of her children because Mal builds from memories—all her dreams have her children in them. 

It's too close of a call and three days later, Mal calls him with an idea that eventually unfolds into totems. 

He never sees what Dom's is before he takes Mal's, guilt etched all over his features as he spins the top almost obsessively as if he's willing the top to keep spinning—as if he's willing it to be something he could count on. Arthur knows that Dom's reality is nothing but a frail fraction of truth. Mal's top could be lying and that's why Arthur always looks away because he can see her smiling face in grooves of the top and it barely stops him from putting a bullet between Dom's stupid squinting eyes.

"What if Mal was right?" Miles' voice floats over the line. Arthur watches as Dom sleeps fitfully on the bed in front of him. He palms his pistol, flicking his thumb over the safety and listening to it click in the quiet of the room. 

"Miles."

He laughs. "She always had that uncanny ability to make you regret not believing in her, didn't she?"

<3<3<3

Dom works because he has nothing left. Arthur follows him because he's still chasing Mal.

They both are. 

Fortunately, the first two jobs Arthur sets up for them are a big deal. There's a lot of money being thrown around, and it's dangerous in the dreamscape with a militarized mind and a topside threat of real death. 

Part of him hopes it'll kill Dom and free them both. 

It doesn't. 

But it does give Dom a reputation: crazy, unstable but too brilliant to pass up. 

The next job comes and goes with little to nothing changing. They still share a hotel-room because Arthur doesn't trust Dom and Dom can't get through the night alone. They hardly sleep, spending most of the time working out details or setting up more jobs until Dom collapses in exhaustion. They carve out space in each other. Arthur gives Dom something to control, something to manage so he doesn't think about Mal or Mal's shade haunting him, dreamside and topside. Dom gives Arthur something to take care of in place of Mal. 

They find a rhythm that will consume them.

<3<3<3

The first time Eames works with them, he doesn't talk to Arthur. He contributes when he can to the plan and talks to Dom about the extraction, leaving all the details to Arthur. He doesn't cross the room to loom in Arthur's space. He doesn't call Arthur even though he's on the other side of the room. He doesn't text. He doesn't make innuendos. He doesn't do anything he used to do, except stare.

Blank faced and _disappointed_.

However, there isn't time to worry about anything but Dom. His projection of Mal is getting worse, she's invading more of their landscapes and Dom can't build anymore. 

Not building makes Dom just a little bit crazier. 

The dreamscape has gone to hell. Zombies are crawling out of the woodwork as Dom locks himself in the safe-room with the mark. Eventually, the Zombies will make their way into the room, and if the timer doesn't wake them up, they'll fulfill the mark's worst nightmare. But Eames and Arthur are between the mob of brain-zombies and Dom's extraction attempt. 

"Fucking mental," he hears Eames mutter when Arthur takes to double tapping the zombies. It seems to work. 

"What is your problem?" Arthur snarls out because the smell is terrible with all the rotting flesh and he's so fucking _done_. 

"Don't get me started, pet." 

The zombies keep coming in waves until it gets to be too much and Arthur knows that they won't run out the timer. He looks down at his gun and then to Eames, who is spraying the closest zombies with firepower from his double barreled shotgun. 

"Eames," he says and when the Englishman turns around, Arthur almost swallows his tongue from the breadth of emotion he finds there. 

"Oh, now you want to talk?" 

He sounds angry and frustrated and all the things Arthur knows he is too but just can't feel anymore. Instead, he shoots a line of zombies dead before turning back to Eames and starting again. 

"Eames, I'm sorry," is what he says before he fills Eames up with bullets before the zombies can get to him. 

He's too late to shoot himself.

<3<3<3

After that, word gets out.

Dominick Cobb is going to get himself and everyone else killed. Or stuck in Limbo. But he's too good to work without and so the disclaimer gets slapped to him: 

Don't work with Cobb without Arthur. 

That's that. 

Arthur doesn't see Eames on the job for quite a while after that.

<3<3<3

It's just a training run.

It's the worst training run of Arthur's fucking life. 

He's checking out the maze and looking for flaws or places to put loops and shortcuts. He takes his time but when he's done everything he can do, he sets off to find Cobb.

What he finds certainly lives up to a Cobb nightmare. 

It's a park. Cobb has his firearm drawn and pointed at Mal, who is in the middle of stabbing little Jamie. There seems to be blood everywhere and Arthur knows that it's unrealistic—that a child couldn't bleed that much—but Cobb's mind has always been terribly melodramatic. 

Phillipa is running across the way, yelling cheerfully for her mother while Mal licks James' blood off her knife. 

Cobb is still watching, gun drawn but Arthur can tell that the safety is still on. 

When Phillipa reaches Mal, Arthur unloads a clip into the back of Mal's head as Phillipa's screams, "Papa! Papa! You killed Mama! Papa!" She keeps repeating, her tiny hands banging on Arthur's shins. 

There is blood everywhere but none of it is Mal's. 

When he looks over at Cobb, he's still looking at James' mangled body with glazed horror. 

"You've got to learn to shoot her," Arthur says because it's true. "She's not the real Mal." 

Cobb nods but he's not listening.

<3<3<3

The first time Eames meets Mal, it's rather strange. Mostly because by the time Eames arrives to save Arthur from whatever trouble he's found himself in while he and Cobb were running the extraction, Mal has already removed four fingers, shot the other hand off and spent the last twelve minutes taking a cattle prod to his skin.

Arthur, in his haze of torture, thinks that seeing _two_ projections of Mal is probably stranger. 

What must be Cobb's interpretation of _Arthur's_ projection of Mal is tied up in the corner, crying and screaming frantically, _"Arthur, do you love her more?"_

None of the Mals are wearing a wedding ring. 

Eames storms in and Arthur barely has time to understand what is happening because Mal is trying to get his tortured body aroused, for what purpose he's unaware, and the strangeness of this Cobb-inspired-Mal is making his head spin. Granted, so is the massive amount of blood he's lost but it's not enough to kill him and he wishes, not for the first time, that his body was less resilient. Before he can really understand that yes, Eames is here and he's not going to be happy and will most certainly have questions, Cobb's Mal is cursing and spiting at him, trying to shove his flaccid dick inside of her and giving him another jolt of the cattle prod. Eames shoots her in the head.

Twice. 

"You will explain," Eames says before he puts a bullet between Arthur's eyes and Arthur has never felt such bliss from being killed before, not even that time in dreamscaped Mars.

When they resurface, Arthur vomits and, thankfully, passes out on his lawn chair—his body still humming and contorting with phantom pain.

<3<3<3

When Arthur returns to consciousness, he's not in his hotel room. However, he's not tied up and being tortured so he counts it as a win. His body feels tight, like he's woken from a hangover where his muscles were rigid all night long. As he lets his body adjust to the room and its current state of wholeness, he remembers the immaculate way Cobb's Mal tore him apart and he can't help but curl into the soft sheets around him and wish that he wasn't naked.

The comfort of a suit was something he rarely denied himself. 

"Welcome to the world of the living," Eames' soft voice says and Arthur turns when he throws a familiar red die on the bed. Arthur doesn't hesitate to snake one pale arm out to finger the die before rolling it himself. 

Reality. God, Arthur loves things that are real. 

"I'm having lunch sent up," Eames says, his eyes glued to Arthur and Arthur tries not to flinch away. "And then we're going to have a little conversation about what the bloody fuck happened in there. You're not going to leave anything out, you're not going to be obtuse and you're going to eat every last bit of the food I ordered or I will tell Cobb exactly what I saw." 

Arthur blanches. He hates how Eames knows exactly what to say to get him to talk. Of course he doesn't want Cobb to know that Mal continues to haunt him and how Arthur dreads going into Cobb's dreams for fear of what might happen if chaos-in-the-style-of-Miss-Mal reigns supreme on the day. He has managed to convince Cobb that Mal had stopped seeking him out but she never has. Arthur has just gotten better at avoiding her and trapping her in mazes while Cobb is busy. 

"I hope you ordered soup," is the only thing Arthur says in response.

<3<3<3

"I never met Cobb's wife in person," Eames says when Arthur is halfway through his tomato bisque.

"Mal," Arthur says with a protectiveness he doesn't understand. "She wasn't just _Cobb's wife_. Her name was Mal." 

Eames' eyebrow mocks him. Arthur feels uncomfortable, so he tears into his baguette and blames his queasy stomach on the phantom torture and not the prospect of sharing part of his personal life with Mr. Eames of all people. 

"But you knew her." 

"Don't mock me, Mr. Eames. You know exactly how well I knew her." 

This time, the smile on Eames' face is fond and smug. Arthur thinks, not for the first time, that it's absurd that they've ended up here, together, some years later when they started so very far apart. 

"Do you remember the Zurich job?" 

Memory flickers across Eames' attractive face before he grins and steals a bit from Arthur's baguette. "When you went arse over tea kettle and annihilated half the countryside topside? I had no idea anyone could do that with C4, a kilo of flour and some simple weaponry circa World War one."

"In all honesty, I have no idea if we're talking about the same job now." 

"You were a maniac," Eames continues, leering. "I wanted to see what else your magical trigger finger could do outside the dream, pet." 

"Yes, well," Arthur says blandly, "Mal would have liked that her death brought out your libido." 

The sad thing was she completely would. 

"She's been hanging around Cobb's subconscious since shortly after," Arthur says roughly, his mind already casting back to the multitude of violent encounters he's had with Cobb's projection. 

"How long has she been about yours?" 

Arthur looks up from the scrape of his spoon over the bowl. "Long before," Arthur settles on. "But my Mal is nothing like what Cobb has created." 

"Mate, I may not have the passion for research like you but I've done my background on Cobb," he says and Arthur surprises himself when he doesn't flinch as Eames' fingers curl around his wrist. "You've been running about the world with his rogue subconscious because they think he killed her." 

"He didn't." 

He _knows_ , beyond a doubt, that Cobb didn't push her or pull out of a suicide pact or any of the other theories that the police have come up with but there is a part of him that blames Cobb for encouraging her. They were reckless together. They were fucking thirsty for more and part of Arthur blames Cobb because they fed off each other. The other part blames himself for never being able to love her like she wanted because then she wouldn't have gone and fallen for another dreamer like Cobb. The other part doesn't care who is to blame, he just wants to blow shit up until he feels better—until she comes back or until he can look her children in the eye and not want to apologize for killing their beautiful mother.

"You always sound so sure." Eames' voice is soft and curling around the edges and Arthur almost closes his eyes. "Always so sure of yourself, love." 

"Dreamers always kill themselves," Arthur says firmly. 

He finishes his soup with only one hand, Eames' fingers stay loosely ringed around his right wrist. He has no idea what this means but it feels softer than the raging feelings he has for Cobb that have manifested from his and Mal's twisted love affair. 

"You follow because of her." 

Arthur doesn't respond to the statement. 

"You shouldn't do the Cobol job." 

Arthur has no idea how Eames knows but it seems of little importance. 

"But you'll do it anyway so that Mal's Cobb can keep working, keep from going round the fucking bend, while you get tortured by Mal to keep anyone from catching on that she jeopardizes every job."

Arthur stares at the place where Eames' fingers, callused from thieving, tighten over his bony wrist. Goodness, he feels thin everywhere, like the months after Uganda—like when Eames had kissed his wrists and worshipped the life there. 

"She loves him," he says with quiet steel.

"But she loved you more." 

"No," Arthur corrects, "just differently." 

Silence stretches between them and Arthur resists the urge to study Eames' face. This isn't the time or the place for something to evince in the space between them. It's not a secret that there is something here, maybe it's been there from the beginning, but Arthur can barely handle Cobb's errant subconscious. He can't take chances with his own. Not now. 

"I can't be there for the Cobol job."

Arthur frowns. He hadn't asked. "Eames-"

"But ring me afterward," Eames finishes and this time, Arthur does look up to study the stern but boyish charm of his face. Eames, seemingly afraid of nothing, doesn't flinch away from Arthur's calculating gaze. He doesn't remove his fingers either. His thumb strokes rhythmically at the flutter of his pulse point and Arthur breathes through his mouth. 

When Eames squeezes twice, Arthur looks away when he gets up, taking the lunch tray with him. When he gets to the door that leads to the living area of the hotel-room, Arthur can't stop himself. 

"Why?" 

"What's that pet?" Eames looks back, his face flickering from private to publicly charming and aloof. 

"Why would you want to help Cobb? You think he's unhinged. You hate working with him." 

The look of Eames' face catches something hard in Arthur's chest. "I don't give a damn about Cobb, darling." 

And then he's gone. 

Arthur puts on the suit he wore yesterday and makes his way back to his own hotel room, trying to ignore the little parts of Eames' room that he wants to take in. (The half finished cups of tea, clothes and towels strewn on any available surface, surveillance equipment and other bits that Arthur ignores even though he wants to memorize every surface.)

When Cobb shows up with a black eye and a limp the next day to debrief, Arthur isn't surprised but he doesn't find himself feeling remotely pissed off. He feels astonishingly non-homicidal. 

He buys everyone coffee at midday and smiles, briefly, at Eames when he suggests he accompany Arthur on his tail of their mark for follow up.

<3<3<3

Arthur knew the Cobol job was dangerous.

He went through with it anyway. 

Now, looking at Saito's face on a the roof as a helicopter roars above him, he can't understand why he ignored the nagging voice in the back of his head—why, of all times, he thought it wise to let Cobb run wild. 

Arthur knows he still feels like he needs to prove himself. But Mal's dead and there's no one else in the world to offer him soft compliments and glowing praise because _Mal's dead_. 

It doesn't explain why he doesn't put up much of a fight when Cobb says it can be done, but Arthur has a good idea why. 

It's written all over Cobb's face, the lines of guilt so filthy deep that Saito's too thin smile is the only thing that stops him from killing Cobb right then and watching the blood seep all over the air strip. He's never hated Cobb more. 

It's … what he feels. 

When the board the plane to Paris, Arthur asks questions he already knows the answers to and Cobb backs off swiftly with a frown—a lie. Sometimes, Cobb's self preservation instinct amazes Arthur. 

Everything seems clearer. A waking nightmare, like being tied to the tracks and listening as the train rattles forward. 

Because if Arthur were Cobb, if Arthur had jumped into his wife's head and _ruined her_ , then Arthur would have prodded just a little bit harder and enjoyed it when someone else took his life off his hands. 

Instead, Cobb retreats to the opposite side of the plane to make phone calls to Miles. Arthur takes deep breaths because the only thing he wants to do right now is exact revenge. Before, when it was just Mal's lost face swimming in front of him on the bedroom floor, it didn't seem to matter how or why it happened—it just mattered that it happened and that there wasn't anything to be done about it. Now, with Cobb accepting a job _to get back to his kids_ by performing the single action that took their mother away from them—away from Arthur—everything about the how and why matters. 

It's two more hours to Paris when Arthur unbuckles his seat belt and goes after Cobb. 

"This," Arthur says coldly, "is not atonement. Doing this job, does not mean I forgive you—does not make you a passable human being, is that understood? You _can never_ make up for what you've done, you stupid stupid fuck..." 

Cobb just nods. 

"We're going under and I want to see it," Arthur says when Dom's sitting, eyes bright with pain and a calm that comes with having your guilt aired out and spoken like a dirty secret washed clean for all to see exactly how _ugly_ it truly is. 

"Arthur, it's not..."

"I don't give a shit what you have to say right now." 

They go under to see the memories Cobb is afraid to trap Mal inside. 

When they wake, Arthur storms out of the cabin, away from Cobb's crumbling face and into the bathroom where he breaks the mirror and cries. He cries and cries and abhors every moment of it.

He has been such a fool. 

The phone rings three times before Eames picks up. 

"Darling?" 

Arthur just breaths, his sobs hitching across the line like a pathetic child whose had his toy stolen _but he just doesn't care_. He feels like he's been robbed anyway. He feels like he's been fucking robbed blind by the worst criminal in the world. 

"Arthur..." 

Arthur swallows snot and salty water. "Where are you?" 

There is a struggled pause. Arthur knows that Eames is doing his damnedest to keep his mouth shut, to not ask all the right questions because whatever it is between them, it's clear that Arthur's not the hero here. 

"I'm home," Eames says with a sigh. "Mombasa." 

"Okay." 

More deep breaths as Arthur focuses on the background noise filtering across the line. The sounds of English football floats over the line and he ignores Eames' sighs, non-verbal pleas for information. 

"Arthur—" 

"Don't," Arthur says, but it doesn't sting and for that, he's grateful. "I'm sorry I didn't call." 

"Cobol—" 

Arthur laughs. "Yeah, I know. I might need you in a few days." 

"Darling, don't talk dirty to me when you're so far away." 

Arthur shakes his head and runs the taps. "I'll be in touch." 

"I await your hand as always." 

When Arthur walks out of the bathroom, he thinks he'll send Cobb to pick up Eames—just to keep them both on their toes.

<3<3<3

It's the night before they board the plane with Fisher, when Eames calls him.

"You're lazy," Arthur answers and it's true. Eames' hotel is only a block away.

"I just wanted to inform you," Eames says with a slow and deliberate drag of his voice, which means he's indulging in a cigarette. "That just because I've been patiently waiting—"

"Some would call that professionalism."

"—that I've haven't forgotten that you've got a thing."

Arthur smiles despite himself. "A thing? Remember what I said about specificity, Mr. Eames."

"Can I just say, I get a stiffy every time you call me that."

Arthur pauses before he says, "I know."

"Oh darling, you wound me. You wound me so!"

"Is there a point to this conversation?"

"There is indeed, love. It is to say that you've got _a thing_ that I haven't been mentioning for the sake of professionalism and the fact that you tend to get a bit violent on jobs, also a turn-, I must add—"

Arthur does not laugh. "Eames," he says sternly.

"Right-o! That is to say, we'll be talking about this."

"Is that so?"

"It's a promise," Eames closes with, hanging up and leaving Arthur smiling, completely forgetting about what this job has in store for them.

<3<3<3

Militarized minds are tricky when they're planned for and practically impossible when they're not, so Arthur lets Cobb yell at him without violence because that means Cobb's hiding something.

When the sedative comes to light, Arthur is sure that they're all going to go insane in limbo. He had assumed that Yusuf had made a sedative that would function normally and not leave them trapped. He has assumed so much of this job was taken care of, when in reality, it was a house of cards waiting patiently for the first gust of wind.

His only fleeting thought, looking at Eames sulking across the way, is that at least they'll have plenty of time to talk in Limbo.

As Arthur sets up the chargers in the elevator, his watch ticking furiously, he doesn't hope that this will work. He doesn't think they have a chance of getting out of this intact. He doesn't think they'll ever wake up.

He only thinks of what Mal would be like in limbo as the charges blow and they fall.

<3<3<3

He falls in love with Ariadne before he even knows he is capable of it.

Instead of looking at Cobb with wide eyes and an open heart, she sees inception—Mal’s and Fisher's—as character flaws too unforgivable. The secrets she finds in Cobb are too dark to be loved and her judgement is clear. Her eyes are calm, looking over the plane to Cobb's still sleeping form.

Ariadne sees a monster.

LAX is crowded and Arthur feels hazy with success, still humming adrenaline and heavy with relief because for the first time in a long time, _this feels over_.

Arthur doesn't have any obligations. There are no jobs lined up for him, or wrecked adults to babysit or insane companies to run away from. The freedom is a nasty taste in the back of his throat that he keeps swallowing around because he just can't get enough.

He wants to follow Cobb, just a few more hours, to see Phillipa but he knows that he can't. Going back with him would be taking on something else entirely—nothing like finishing what Mal stared and too similar to devotion. He knows it would be easy for him to let hate bleed into allegiance. He knows how easy it would be for him to take mourning to a completely differently level because there is a small part of him that connects the dots from Mal to Cobb, as if Cobb is the only thing Arthur has left of her. There's a line between mourning and obsession that he's been toeing, keeping Cobb as a clear reminder, but if he goes back and assimilates then he'll watch himself become her.

His place isn't with Cobb anymore. He's not Mal. His place is here—however or wherever that's meant to be.

He's browsing the departures when his phone beeps. Expecting to see Eames' name on the screen, he's pleasantly surprised to see Ariadne's.

"Where are you going?"

Arthur looks around. He finds her browsing shitty paperbacks two hundred yards away.

"Don't you have school?"

There's a flight for Paris in three hours. Arthur stares at the screen as she laughs over the line.

"Please, my professors are letting me resume study in the fall. I'm free as a bird, with an insane amount of money in my bank account that I have absolutely no idea what to do with. I feel like I should be more thankful that I've gotten out of this whole ordeal alive and I'd like to say I'm going to walk away from dream-but—Cobb may be a fucking idiot but he's right about me and..."

He wants to walk across the terminal and hold her as her voice turns panicked and just a little bit hysterical. Instead, he looks across to catch her eye and flashes four numbers.

"Are you sure it won't be too dangerous?"

Arthur smiles, flashing the numbers with his fingers again before taking off toward the terminal. "It'll be fine, Ariadne. We'll teach you how to live a life of genius crime."

"We?"

"Oh yes, _we_ ," he hangs up and disassembles his phone, taking the sim card out and breaking it in half before dumping it into the trash.

He'll have to text Eames from Ariadne's phone.

<3<3<3

"Paris?"

It's Eames. His breath pressing up against the nape of Arthur's neck and it's totally, completely and utterly inappropriate for the cabin of the plane they're boarding. Arthur puts his carry-on into the overhead bin, taking a book and his ipod out of the side compartment. Eames goes on breathing, _and smirking_ behind him.

"Take your seat, Mr. Eames," Arthur says, sliding into his own row and smothering his smile.

Eames looms over him, on the guise of organizing the carry-compartment but he's staring at Arthur. There's something twisting across his face, like Arthur's this increasingly difficult plant that Eames keeps watering, talking to him in all the ways the books say to do but he's still droopy and dying.

Arthur closes his eyes.

"I'm onto you," Eames says, leaning down to speak the words right into Arthur's ear. The shiver it sends down his spine keeps him hard for half the flight.

<3<3<3

Ariadne goes to book another hotel room, just as a precaution as they'll all be sharing one for a little bit, Eames doesn't waste his time.

He presses Arthur against the wall with steady hands on his shoulders and Arthur feels his head collide with the wall just as Eames takes his mouth. He gives as good as he's getting. He's frantic, opening his mouth and trying to devour Eames all at once, licking into his mouth and clutching his lapels like Arthur can physically crawl inside of him. But Eames surprises him, pulling back and forcing the pace slow, even as Arthur growls his displeasure—Eames stands his ground.

Arthur finally matches his pace, sighing in defeat and unadulterated pleasure as his tongue curls soft and slow around Eames'. He can feel each and every finger on his shoulders, the rough of Eames' stubble and length of his erection against his thigh.

When Arthur licks at his crooked teeth, Eames moans and pulls back. He rests his forehead against Arthur's and presses his body more insistently against Arthur's. It feels glorious.

"I thought we were going to talk," Arthur pants out.

"Hmm," Eames says, licking his lips. "We will."

Arthur leans in for another kiss but then Ariadne is opening up the door and he's left adjusting himself as she walks in, Eames halfway across the room wearing a knowing smirk. Arthur desperately wants to fuck him.

Or shoot him in the foot again.

<3<3<3

Ariadne goes off to meet some friends. Eames orders a local tail and they don't end up doing any talking.

Arthur fucks like his personality. As does Eames.

Arthur is meticulously thorough about his sexual exploration, prone to violence and craving complete control or total submission with nothing in between. There is hardly a lack of agenda and it pleases him. Eames is focused in a lackadaisical way, zoning in on the ultimate goal and playing dirty with his careful observations to get there. He's slutty with it. Thankfully, he's not particularly picky about what goes where and even though they are constantly out of synch, fighting for something even though it's unclear what is at stake, they seem to have fantastic sex anyway.

It's disastrous, of course, but perfection is probably lined and hemmed in the moments of clear chaos and imperfection.

Arthur's sure of it.

<3<3<3

That isn't necessarily true. It isn't as if they don't talk it all. They just.. speak their own language. It doesn't come as a surprise that they've developed a way to speak volumes using only their names—as their phone conversations merit. Granted, this comes in handy when pleasure is the fashion of the day and verboseness is out of the question. However, it means that Eames demands conversations when Arthur would really rather not be talking at all.

For example... when Arthur's made his way to his knees, working the thick length of Eames' cock down the back of his throat and moaning, shameless in the pleasure he takes from the fact that Eames' dick is relatively proportional to the width and breadth of his shoulders. This is a moment that doesn't involve conversation as far as Arthur is concerned.

But when Eames chokes out, "Arthur" with command and frustration, Arthur has no choice but to obey, looking up and yes, they're having a whole conversation then that tumbles low in Arthur's belly and breaks something into pieces. It ends when Eames tugs Arthur up by his shirt, wrinkling it beyond a dry cleaners repair.

"Don't," Eames whispers and Arthur admits defeat.

It's very, very liberating.

The conversation they have with Arthur riding Eames' fingers, with desperate moans and sloppy kisses, leads to Arthur riding Eames’ cock so that they can face each other, because Eames isn't through making demands. Arthur comes with Eames' names on his lips, gasping out needy sounds that are closer to sobbing than moaning, as Eames drives his cock hard into Arthur's spasming hole. It's filthy good, bliss and years of sexual frustration exploding between them as Eames keeps fucking up into him as Arthur's rides out his orgasm—fingernails digging into Eames' ridiculous tattoos. Eames' mouth is firmly attached to Arthur's neck, alternating between sucking large, hideous hickeys onto his skin and whispering his name with words beyond meaning.

It's just the way it's supposed to be.

They air out the room and take a shower, although cleaning gets side tracked for a while because Eames' fingers get shoved back up Arthur's ass and blow jobs happen.

Later, when Arthur walks to the other side of the room, ready to climb into bed to share with Ariadne...

"Arthur," Eames says low and vulnerable.

He closes his eyes, feels around for the control he so desperately needs before he walks over and crawls underneath the duvet, as the sheet has been disregarded for the sake of cleanliness. Arthur lets out a warning of his own when Eames invades his space but he's ignored in favor of Eames dragging his arm around Eames' naked waist.

"I hate being the small spoon," Eames says, squeezing Arthur's hand and wiggling back until his back is in full contact with Arthur's front.

"I know," he says. He watches the rise and fall of Eames' chest as it syncs up with his own breathing, causing the downy hairs on the back of Eames' neck flutter.

Arthur sighs, putting his forehead to rest against the back of Eames' neck. "We'll work on it."

<3<3<3

Ariadne makes three jokes about lube, one about anal sex and four really vulgar hand gestures (which Eames returns with enthusiasm) before Arthur can find them another job to focus on.

Which requires them to get another hotel space to work out of so that Arthur can have some semblance of sanity. Ariadne moves into the third room because she sleeps like the dead and Arthur can just work around her if he needs to. They move her into the new room and come back to find the linens changed, floors vacuumed and towels replaced.

When the chocolates left on their pillows remind him of Mal, Eames doesn't say anything at all. He simply traces the frown lines like wakes left behind a boat.

Arthur's glad.

<3<3<3

Eames is off doing whatever it is he does, when Arthur makes a few calls.

The mean French lady who is tending to his apartment is still mean and still taking care of Arthur's slightly empty space. He thanks her, mentally reminding himself to give her a bonus, and tells her that he'll be around for the next couple of weeks.

And that's that.

When he walks by a tiny little shop advertising for Vespa rentals, he's particularly taken with the shiny red one. Besides, it's annoying to have to call for a car in Paris and walking will be dreadful if he plans to spend anytime at his apartment.

It also _begs_ to be stolen.

As Arthur drives away, the little Vespa purring underneath him ,he realizes that maybe Eames has been rubbing off on him.

Eames calls him when he's unloading a box of rare, first edition books.

Arthur doesn't answer.

He stops to call Miles, checking up on the kids before he decides to call Phillipa. Cobb sounds happy, if tense, over the phone. But Arthur's fairly sure it's because he's afraid of Arthur and not because anything is wrong. He listens to Phillipa's day, trying to imagine what Mal would have been like as a young girl and buys twelve grand of books before he leaves, dismantling his cellphone on the way back.

He manages to buy only three for Mal. He doesn't congratulate himself but it's a near thing.

<3<3<3

The next day, Arthur buys a coat rack.

It's _gorgeous_. The dark wood is sprawling, worn with use and he feels a little jolt of warmth when he sees it in the shop window. He runs in, French tumbling out of his mouth to put the treasure on hold.

He can't help but smile at the older gentleman who looks deeply pleased with the sale and Arthur rushes out with a promise to pick it up soon. He gets the coffee he originally set out for and returns to the hotel with renewed determination.

"What's gotten into you?"

Arthur looks up to see that Ariadne is sitting on the desk. He frowns. She looks too happy.

"Come again?"

Ariadne shrugs and makes a thrusting motion with her hips. "I mean," she says with a jerk of her head. "I know _who's_ gotten into you, but you're acting weird today."

Arthur rolls his eyes.

"It's nothing."

She squirms on his desk, swinging her legs back and forth until her toes smack into his knees and he notices the bright electric green of her toe-nails. She's not wearing any shoes. It's their first contact, that he can recall, since their kiss in the dream and it feels … .

He closes his eyes.

"I bought a coat rack," he says, making a decision.

Her eyebrows go up, "Yes?" and she wiggles her toes on his knees.

Arthur nods, counts his breath and gets back to work.

<3<3<3

They fuck in the shower.

They make-out, slow and playful, when they're done. Eames doesn't ask to wash Arthur's hair but Arthur hears the cap pop and Eames tilts his head back gently. With sure fingers and steady breathing, Eames works the shampoo into a lather and massages the path down Arthur's neck. This time, when Arthur moans, it doesn't lead to sex.

They lay in bed, damp from the shower and Arthur feels … oddly vulnerable.

"Can you forge inanimate objects?"

Arthur stares at the ceiling, even as Eames rolls over and pushes himself up onto his elbows to look at Arthur's face properly.

"Haven't thought about it," Eames says softly but thoughtful.

Arthur licks his lips. He thinks about his apartment, full of books and endless hardwood floors. There is part of him that misses it so—that misses this city like it was always home but he just … Paris is this block and he can't seem to breathe past.

"It'd be difficult, yeah?" Eames says aimlessly. "Forging without a mind."

"You've never tried it?"

"Not at all."

Arthur closes his eyes and listens to Eames' breathing. "What would you forge," he says after the silence settles. "If you could be inanimate, what would you be?"

"Something loved," is the answer he gets. "Something worn and loved, like a scarf or a book or I don't know, a child's toy."

The idea floats between them, inching onto Arthur's skin like the tattoo curled along Eames' shoulder.

They fall asleep.

<3<3<3

They finish the job without incident.

"Is everything going to be like this?"

"Like what?"

Ariadne's face is scrunched up and she's chewing on a honey stick. Arthur has never really liked honey but the way she eats it makes it look appealing.

"You know," she goes on, playing with the frayed end of her scarf, like he does know.

"Simple?"

"Boring?"

Arthur laughs. "Depends on who you continue to work with, Ariadne."

Her mouth twists. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing will ever be like inception."

"Never?"

Arthur thinks about Eames' mouth smiling against his. "Maybe not," he answers and she smiles, wide and perfect and real.

"Where to next?"

<3<3<3

Eames takes a topside job dealing with too-art in Seattle and Ariadne laughs when he almost slices his finger off cutting up a new passport.

Next is Johannesburg.

They do a job in New Zealand shortly after, a tiny town that doesn't even have a proper name—it's more like a village and Eames threatens to move there because the local shopgirl has taken to giving him free chocolates whenever he stops in.

They part for two weeks. Eames goes off to meet up with Yusuf and Arthur takes Ariadne on a militarization run. It's ... surprisingly relaxing.

Ariadne eats ice cream with a fork and rants about feminism, queer identities in literature and about Mal's papers on dreamscape that she's dug up from Miles' computer. She reads books she should have read in high school, naps all the time and wants, desperately, to ask more questions than she actually gets around to acting on. Arthur can see it in the way she talks about Mal, the corners of her lips turning upwards and curiosity bursting through her seams. He shoots Miles an email, tells him to release whatever Ariadne wants to get a hold of to read—that it's alright by him and he feels oddly warm when Miles sounds strangely proud over the line.

He speaks to Phillipa more than he should but she's upset about something—take your child to work day or something that Arthur hates himself for waiting to be there for. It's strange for him, not blaming Cobb for Phillipa calling him instead of dealing with it himself like the father he should be. But Phillipa will always be a shocking reminder of Mal when she opens her mouth and the distance between them grows the harder Cobb tries to cling onto her or understand his own problems as a father and a widow. Instead, he waits until the timezones match up, settles into the closet of his room to breathe, closes the door and calls her.

He learns to enjoy himself. He learns to enjoy Phillipa as her own person and surprises himself.

Eames calls him when he knows Arthur won't answer.

The result are messages left by Eames that contain little else than heavy breathing.

<3<3<3

They're in Munich, where Arthur loves the beer but doesn't understand any of the language and Ariadne wants a pair of lederhosen so badly, he's afraid she might prostitute herself.

He finds out Eames' favorite color by accident.

"Have you seen my socks?"

Eames looks up from where he's stuffing a leaking pastry into his face. Even _his eyes_ look guilty.

Arthur frowns. "What have you done with them?"

"The green ones? The ones that look like pond scum?"

"They don't--" Arthur says before he stops and shakes his head. "Where are they?"

"On my feet."

It's conversations like this that make Arthur's head pound unpleasantly and remind him so much of Mal that his chest aches.

"Do I even want to know?"

"It's my favorite color!"

<3<3<3

They're outside Amsterdam, listening to Ariadne have sex with a stranger across the wall.

"I'm seventy-five percent sure it's a man," Arthur says. "But then again, I thought I heard giggling. Does Ariadne giggle?"

Eames is rolling around in laughter, face relaxed with the marijuana brownie they'd shared and Arthur feels like he could talk for days.

"Then again, with as much weight they're throwing around, it might just be a man. I always thought she'd be a bit more—"

"You would have gone to university if you hadn't been kidnapped by the government," Eames says, interrupting him. "What would you have gone for?"

The thought of Ariadne and another man kind of freaks him out. Surprising, the thought of her and a woman doesn't bother him as much but Arthur doesn't have the mental capacity at the moment to focus on more than one thing at a time, let alone analyze his feelings on the subject. He turns to Eames and frowns, Ariadne's sexual partner choice fleeing his mind. "How do you know—"

Eames rolls onto his stomach and shoves his face into the pillow. "Don't be such a tosser, answer the question."

"Literature," Arthur says without pause.

Eames snores in response.

<3<3<3

Ariadne almost gets shot in Galloway.

She laughs the entire way through their getaway, while Arthur covers her body with his own and glares so hard at Eames that, if they were in dreamscape, Arthur is damn sure it would have exploded.

He doesn't speak to Eames for a week.

<3<3<3

They make up in Cairo.

When Eames is asleep, Arthur crawls out of bed and sneaks into the bathroom and calls Cobb.

"Arthur?"

"Yeah," he says, staring at his reflection. "Can you put Phillipa on?"

"I don't know—"

"You really don't want to fight me on this one," and he means it.

Arthur tries to picture what Cobb's face would be like right now. His own face twists in the mirror, trying to remember, but nothing comes to him. Interesting.

"Cobb—"

"I'll get her."

<3<3<3

"Do you dream anymore?"

His stubble is soft and ragged against Arthur's bare shoulder.

Two breaths.

"Only when I'm awake."

<3<3<3

They fly to Barcelona.

Ariadne falls asleep on his shoulder and Arthur cards through her hair until he drifts off as well.

<3<3<3

The job is complicated but safe and Ariadne builds elaborate igloos in Russian Futurist poetry settings. Eames goes to watch football, more often than not, with a surly look on his face because they refuse to join them.

They dream together.

It's almost September.

<3<3<3

The job’s over.

Arthur makes coffee from the old machine in the corner and Ariadne looks up flights to Paris on her laptop.

"Where are you going next?"

Arthur shrugs. It's something he's been avoiding thinking about.

"Not sure," he says instead.

Ariadne hums behind him. "No jobs?"

"Not yet."

Arthur pours coffee into three cups because they haven't gotten any tea and Eames is out getting food from the nearest stand.

"You could come to Paris," Ariadne says, casual. "If you wanted too."

"I could," he says truthfully. There isn't anything to stop him.

Well.

<3<3<3

Eames fucks him up against the wall of their hotel room. He's silent, except for harsh moans and choked-grunts that sound wrenched from him, like he wants nothing more to keep them hostage and deny them from Arthur. Arthur claws at the wallpaper, but gets nowhere—not with Eames fucking up into him and leaving marks on his skin that will last for days.

Eames slams his hips up, twisting and snarling into Arthur with pain soaked pleasure that makes them both yell—Arthur into the wall and Eames biting into the curve of Arthur's neck. 

There are two tickets to Mombasa on the side table, next to the condom wrapper, that feel burned into Arthur mind's eye when he comes.

<3<3<3

Eames doesn't look back.

Arthur stares after him because ... well, because that's what he does.

The terminal is busy. There are people rushing to get to their flights on time, a jumble of native Spanish dialects that make their speech difficult for Arthur to decipher. But it's quite beautiful.

Eames' shoulders are tense underneath the slate-gray suit he's put on.

It's Arthur's favorite.

"Ready?"

Arthur swallows and turns to pick up his carry-on. "Certainly," he says, glancing back as Eames gets eaten by the crowd.

Ariadne stares at him. There is pity written all over her face and her tongue is poised to ask questions or rewrite the answers.

"Let's go," he says.

He means it. He does.

<3<3<3

"Did you call Phil?"

Arthur nods, even though Miles can't see him.

"She's been asking about you," Miles continues in a voice that wouldn't sound like a guilt trip to a stranger, but reeked of casual disapproval to Arthur's trained ear. 

"I called her yesterday," Arthur answers. He's facing the steps of his Paris apartment. "She was at swim practice." 

Miles hums over the line. 

Arthur stares at the steps. 

"Mallorie loved to swim." 

Arthur turns away. "I know, Miles."

<3<3<3

Arthur stays for a month.

In a hotel room close enough to the school that he can use their library, have dinner with Miles every other night and have his pick of the starry-eyed students who whisper his name to each other and spread their legs easily beneath him,because he's everything they've dreamed about—because he's _Arthur_.

He has lunch with Ariadne in the early autumn of October, destroys his cellphone as they walk back to the university and hops a plane to Mexico City hours later.

<3<3<3

He passes up three jobs with Eames already signed on.

There are lots of reasons why, but most of them are made up, pathetic or too true to say out loud. He calls Ariadne and Phillipa when he can and drinks too much coffee. He doesn't think about hotel-room beds or Eames' biceps or how Eames' voice goes all soft when he asks questions he honestly doesn't know the answers to. 

He works. It's fine.

<3<3<3

Four months later, he's in some shitty Italian villa where the wine is fabulous, the people are great but the job is sufferingly slow. His phone rings and he picks it up without looking at it.

"Arthur." 

"You're not in Paris." 

Eames. 

Arthur clutches the phone when he decides on the truth. "No, I'm not." 

"I'm aware." 

It's very quiet on the other line. Arthur can't discern anything about Eames' location. 

"I'm in—" 

"I know where you are, Arthur," Eames says and it's not cold. It's fury bitten and hurt but white hot in a way that only comes from being Eames. "I'm aware of this alias, you used it in Montreal." 

"Yes," because he did and even if he doesn't want to admit it, he's using it now in hope that Eames has it flagged. 

"Now, isn't that interesting." 

It's sarcastic. 

"You never called," Arthur says, because he has no idea what to say. Also, he's relocated his foot to his mouth and can't stop himself from missing Eames as fiercely in this moment as he has the entire four months they've been apart. "It's just—" 

"I feel like someone should have warned me about this side of you, like you should come with some sort of fucking warning label. At least then I'd know what I was being poisoned with." 

"Shut up," he says into the silence. "This isn't about you."

And there, there it is. 

When Eames speaks, it's tight and sad and condescending. "Oh darling, we both know that's far from the truth." 

Arthur breathes and it feels like someone's stuffed a towel into his lungs and it's ragged, musky and he wants to gasp for air but he knows that they won't let him. Not anymore. Not like this. 

"Shut up."

"Let me tell you a little story, hmm?" 

The malice rolling off Eames is fucking palpable. 

"Shut up." 

"Do listen, Arthur, because I think you'll find it illuminating," it rolls of his tongue, accent thick. "See, once there was a little gay boy, mummy and daddy deaddeaddead, who had a habit of making beautiful women fall in love with him before he-"

"Go fuck yourself." 

"I know you've never told your _darling_ Mal that and surely, sweet, sweet little Ariadne thinks you're just a tortured soul who knows how to operate a firearm and successfully perform an autopsy with a serving spoon." 

Arthur can't understand why this hurts so much. 

"Don't pretend to know--"

Eames laughs and it's dripping in cruelty. Arthur feels it draped around his neck like stolen diamonds—like it's choking him and he likes it.

"I don't have to pretend," Eames says in blissful, furious rage. "They get everything I want, Arthur, and I just don't understand why I'm left outside like the ugly orphan boy you've suddenly _changed your mind about_ when we both know that isn't true." 

"Eames—"

" _Everything I want!_ "

It's heavy breathing across the line and Arthur thinks that this is probably what nightmares are like, not Mal ripping his heart out but Eames, slipping through his fingers like liquid mercury, seeping inside to contaminate _everything_ and leaving not an ounce of evidence.

"They might never tire of waiting for you," Eames says finally, his voice soft and defeated. Arthur clings to its pitches. "But I will."

"It was never that simple," Arthur says but he has no idea why. He has no idea what that means. 

Eames tuts and there is a split second where Arthur knows something important is about to happen because the air is pregnant with it, swollen with whatever it is but he can't seem to stop it from coming to fruition. This isn't meant to be. He's sure of it. 

"Loving you has never been simple, Arthur darling. I can't imagine it ever being so." 

The line goes silent and white noise threatens to swollen him whole.

<3<3<3

He gets through the job, because that's what he's supposed to do.

It's close, towards the end. He and the extractor, Tennyson, get in a brief altercation with a nameless face that results in two broken ribs on Arthur's part but they get away. Tennyson hops a train in Florence and Arthur stumbles into the station to wait for his own. 

Ariadne calls him when he's already settled in his own section, laid down over the first-class passenger seats and desperate for rest. 

"You're kind of a sick, sad bastard." 

Arthur breathes into the phone as he palpates his ribs. 

"You wouldn't be saying that if my lung was popped." 

"Seriously, Eames emailed me—" 

"You're in contact with Eames?" 

"Arthur," she says with anger laced in her teeth. "You never told him you left Paris. You never told him any of the things he deserved to know!" 

They feel like small breaks, only enough to hurt, only enough to keep him off his game ... only enough to make him feel mortal. 

"You're such a fucking idiot," she says after a while of listening to his ragged breathing. "You fucked up." 

"I know." 

Scenery blurs up against Arthur's window. 

"Arthur?" 

"What?" 

"Come home."

<3<3<3

He does.

Arthur takes a lengthy job in the city, which requires him to do copious amounts of research and hardly any time under. It's a topside job and he hasn't been able to one of those in ages. He calls Ariadne, listening to her low voice over the connection making plans for the two of them (in between her insults about his emotional intelligence) and then he goes to the safety deposit box as soon as he lands to pick up his keys. 

He takes a taxi from the bank to scout out a place to set up an office for the job. A pastry shop in a particularly seedy part of town has an open space that smells like dough and cream. Arthur pays the security deposit in cash and replaces all the locks with heavy metal, making five copies and pocketing them. On the cab ride back to his apartment, he makes plenty of phone calls and he watches the clock with casual interest through the winding map of conversations he has. 

The mean Frenchwoman says hello with a curt nod and a raised eyebrow, like she knows he's emotionally incompetent. He tries to smile but he knows it falls flat, doesn't reach his eyes and makes him look lost. She just looks back at him like she's considering punching him and taking his money. 

It's ... reassuring. 

The apartment is as he left it. Books line the living room in their proper place on the shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling. It's gloriously comforting just to see them. He runs his hands along a shelf, feeling the variety of spine materials underneath his fingertips. In Arthur's line of work, everything is so fleeting. Technology is changing, theories are evolving and nothing, _nothing_ about their lives is stable, but here, in this room with these books—these books that have lasted hundreds of years, still beautiful, still meaningful, still capable of love—all around him, it feels as if there might be some sort of equilibrium at this address. He pulls a cloth covered copy of  The Mill on the Floss and finds himself running his fingers over the fragile paging, without gloves, and thinking about Maggie' journey through the battered pages.

For the first time in his life, he sees the parallels between Maggie and himself, stead of Maggie and Mal. 

He keeps it out on the coffee table, letting it join Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses in his constant thoughts. 

The living area flows seamlessly into the kitchen, a long marble countertop separating the two spaces. On one end, the book shelves bump into a small pantry and on the other, like bookends, a hallway leads to the two other rooms in the house. Arthur eyes the floors, knowing they need to be re-sanded and polished again to restore their luster. The wood matches the bookshelves, almost perfectly, and it softens the room's dramatic quality. 

A space for a fridge is gaping in the kitchen but the water runs out of the tap and the gas is still turned on, leaving the oven functional. He pulls out his moleskin and takes note of the large items that need to be bought, they're easy enough to purchase.

He'll start there. 

The guest bedroom will get a daybed, for Ariadne, two desks, a safe and some sort of dresser. Right now, it's piled with all the things he's bought and send back over the years—cluttered up with furniture all over the globe and stuffed away for later. Bags of miscellaneous period door knobs; two Georgian sofa tables; mahogany chest he bought because Eames' fingers looked beautiful tracing the seams; a linen cabinet he actually arm wrestled someone for—a room full of things bought on the sheer _idea_ of a home. For a moment Arthur runs his hands over the sheet covered boxes and thinks about loveless lives.

He coughs at the dust and turns away.

The room with the clutter will also be an office. If he's going to spend time here, he needs to separate out his work space from his living space or he'll go mad. The hallway is small and opposite the guest room is a small bathroom with an upright shower. The end of the hallway reveals the master suite. The bedroom door is thick and opens up to a sprawling room, much larger than anything Arthur's ever stayed in longer than it takes to get a job done. Then again, those comparisons are his room as a child, the memory probably smaller than the room, the foster home and the barracks. 

The ceiling is lower here than in the rest of the house and Arthur feels solid in its structural haven. He will need a bed, something large to take up the room’s considerable size and at least a suitable armoire because the walk-in is relatively small. The connecting bathroom has a tub, claw footed and old, in need of a good scouring, but charming still. 

Arthur makes notes and when he's done there, he goes to the living room. There is no place for a formal dining table but the counter space allows for a breakfast bar and there's a bay window that begs for bench seating and a small table. 

He makes several phone calls, his French slow and fumbled from misuse but tolerable. There is a moment when he thinks about calling Ariadne; he thinks about her judging his curtain patterns, criticizing his linen thread-count and laughing at his obsession with antique furniture, although he can't honestly tell which is authentic and which is a reproduction. 

He thinks about calling Ariadne. 

And then he doesn't.

He calls Phillipa, listens to her day and finds himself.

<3<3<3

Some nights, when he's lying in bed, he thinks about Billy Tyler. He was only 20 when Arthur met him but he was blonde and gorgeous and when he smiled, it said, _yes, I know exactly what I want_. In the last six months of Arthur's relationship with the American military, Billy Tyler taught him how to operate firearms.

He would curl around Arthur's back like a predatory cat, whisper instructions in his ear and helpful little hints that always made Arthur hard in his trousers. Back then, he would fantasize about Billy uncurling his hands from the gun in their hands and wrapping his fingers around Arthur's dick instead. He thought about how hot that would be, getting jerked off on the firing range with the slick steel in his hand and Billy's hot breath in his ear. 

Some nights, Arthur wonders if Billy knew what would happen to Arthur—what Arthur would do six months later. He wonders if he were liberating Billy as much as he was liberating himself when he put a perfectly placed bullet right between Billy's smiling eyes. 

Arthur doesn't remember stepping over Billy's body but it must have happened at the time.

<3<3<3

Arthur fills the apartment up with useful things.

The job goes smoothly, slow and meticulous, without being boring. Arthur does what needs to be done and focuses on the fact that he has no idea what to do with an apartment full of useful things when all he can do is think about Eames.

Eames, who is still in Mombasa, and Arthur, who has a house full of things that might have been gathered with Eames in mind. 

Arthur stares at his new but empty refrigerator, his thumb hovering over Eames' name in his cellphone. When he closes the door, his phone is already in his pocket and his destination is the grocery store. 

Later, when he texts Ariadne if she wants to go out to dinner, he gets the following reply:

_eating your feelings isn't the answer._

He's poised to reply when another text comes through from her: 

_you're paying._

He takes her somewhere good and expensive to thank her for her honesty.

<3<3<3

The job wraps up.

Ariadne books them another one, without Arthur's permission of course, and they're extracting from a woman eight-months pregnant with two men very eager to find the real daddy. It's easy and simple because Ariadne pouts when Arthur yells at her for taking a job when she's in school simply because she enjoys designing lake houses. 

It turns out that Ariadne really loves lake houses. 

He's suspicious of her motives (surely boat houses aren't enough?) but the extractor doesn't need a forger and Arthur stops looking over his shoulder every ten seconds. He focuses on the fact that he's already eighty-five percent sure that neither of their employers are the baby's father.

"You should just call him."

Arthur stills his pen for a moment before resuming his train of thought. 

"You know?" Ariadne asks. "Instead of just tracking his aliases and wishing you understood all your manly feelings of love, desperation and brooding angst." 

"I have no idea what you're going on about," Arthur says cooly. "Have you been at the wine?" 

She sticks out her tongue in response and jumps up on the table he's working at, causing his pen to jump on the paper and seriously annoy him. 

"I just don't get it." 

He sighs and rubs at his eyes. "There isn't anything to get, Ariadne." 

"I mean," she continues on as if he hadn't spoken, "you obviously love the fuck out of him. Why don't you just call him, tell him you're sorry for all the stupid things you've said and done and you two can have really awesome make-up sex." 

Arthur blinks. "I don't—"

"You," she says pointing to him, "you're totally repressed. Not like, _sexually_ because hello! Hotels have really thin walls, but I think you've got some serious abandonment issues." 

Right. 

"And what if I do," he says sternly. Not wavering when he catches Ariadne's fluttering gaze. "You think Eames is the one to fix me? _Eames_?" 

His voice is colder, a little more hurt than he'd like but everything feels too sharp in the moment. Ariadne's top is too thin, her bra shows through and he's distracted by the way her sweater doesn't match her earrings. 

"Arthur, you don't need to be fixed."

Her eyes are so open and honest—stupidly naïve and beautiful that Arthur wants to shoot her to preserve that feeling inside of her. Instead, he looks away. 

"You don't know what you're talking about," he says simply. She shakes her head. 

"I don't have to know the story to know the solution," she says, hopping off the table. "Love isn't safe. Life is fucking messy, Arthur. But he's it for you, even Cobb could see that and he's a fucking idiot. Don't screw it all up because you're too scared that things won't go perfectly." 

Arthur stares at the place she just vacated. She drops a kiss on his forehead and leans down to speak into the shell of his ear. "Not everything is a job." 

Then she's gone.

<3<3<3

Two weeks later, Ariadne is back to being a perfectly model student and Arthur's doing topside research, legally even, for a company. It's slow but consistent, even if Arthur's uneasy with this amount of trust being placed so blindly onto him. He could rob them blind if he wanted to and he makes sure to investigate their partners as well. He's meticulously thorough because it's awfully boring.

He rereads his favorite love stories, as if to convince himself that he's nothing like the characters and fails miserably to prove anything.

It isn't until he's wrapped up in Oscar Wilde, two months later, that anything really clicks.

    "His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls." - _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , Chapter Eight. 

It's raining outside in a constant way that makes Arthur roll his totem to make sure he's not dreaming. It's been a lazy day, a failed attempt at making waffles, a small amount of research and all of Oscar Wilde's details on how to succumb to pleasure, to love, to art for the sake of submission. 

He finishes the book, places it back on the shelf and goes to bed. 

That night, he dreams for the first time in over ten years. He won't remember anything pristine from the dreams in the morning, just the sound of shoes on the cobblestone and the sound of rain that blends in with reality. But when he wakes, he knows that he dreamt because everything is strangely lighter—like his mind received a massage while he was sleeping and he feels rested for the first time since Mal left him.

This, he thinks, when the sun illuminates his bedroom and floods the room with golden light, _this_ is it.

<3<3<3

He makes a key.

"You're going to send him a key?" 

Arthur's standing in the hardware store, trying to figure out which key is the right one and chattering to her on the phone. She's not doing any of the things she's supposed to be doing (research for Miles, mostly) and is, instead, trying to convince Arthur to get her a PASIV of her own. He's distracting her with his sordid love-life. It's sadly a very useful tactic and Arthur mourns this information to the fullest. 

"Yes," Arthur says, finally settling on a long silver key, quite peculiar looking. 

"And he'll understand that?" 

Arthur sets the key on the glass counter. 

"I don't know," he says honestly. "I've never done this before." 

"For someone so awesome, you're really fucking stupid," she says with a sigh and a ton of affection. "I've got to go. Call you later." 

Arthur's still staring at the key long after she hands up.

<3<3<3

Wednesday morning, his legal job is wrapped up and he has a call from a local contact who is slightly crazier than an average dream worker. It's not dangerous to work with him, but it's thrilling—a challenge.

He calls Tomas as he leaves the offices, winding through the streets of Paris to get to the nearest post office. He drops the package off to be picked up on the other end by a messenger Arthur trusts in Mombasa and delivered from there. 

"What about that forger of yours?" Tomas says in barely understandable French. 

"Call him," Arthur says. "He might be busy." 

Tomas grunts across the line and Arthur listens as much as possible, his mind on other things.

"Send me the file, we'll go from there." 

Tomas mutters his agreement and gets off the line. 

Arthur calls Phillipa.

<3<3<3

The cemetery is quiet.

It's amazing how someone can be buried in the heart of such a bustling city, buildings rising up everywhere and life surging all around, and there be a cemetery in the thick of it, where little occurs but the degradation of flowers.

Time passes, slow or quick but nothing happens. 

Arthur's shoes squish into the wet ground as he makes his way through the entrance and onto the stone pathways in between the graves. Unlike in America, the graves are long slabs with delicately carved French and it's so _crowded_. If Arthur believed in ghosts, he thinks he wouldn't want to be buried in such close quarters with everyone else. 

The grave he's making his way to is covered in flowers already. There are a plethora of daisy bouquets and red or pink roses scattered around the rectangular grave, all wet from the night’s rain and some already curled in on themselves in death. 

It's too early in the morning, just before dawn truly breaks and Arthur is most certainly breaking and entering. 

The grave is too popular to expect no one to be here during operating hours. 

He places his single sunflower on top of all the others—a bouquet created by strangers for someone they equally have fabricated. His fingers linger, tracing the wet marbled letters that feel strangely warm to the touch.

  
_Madame LAMBOUKAS  
dite EDITH PIAF  
1915-1963_   


Birds eventually start to sing as the sun illuminates most of the sky and Arthur finds himself smiling as he leaves the gravesite behind him.

<3<3<3

Arthur arrives at the workspace before everyone else. He sets up the white board and draws out as much as they know right now, which isn't much but it's the familiarity of drawing everything out for a briefing that Arthur has missed the most from larger-scale jobs.

The bottom line is that topside jobs aren't nearly as interesting as dreamscape projects. 

The space is large, but not as big as most of the warehouses he's worked in over the years. He chooses a desk tucked up into the corner and sets his briefcase on top of it, leaving the organization of his desk for later and goes to unfold the lawn chairs. 

Tomas shows up not ten minutes later, his architect Alice trailing him with long blonde curls and a laugh that makes Arthur want to roll his eyes. Tomas picks most of his team members based on how well they will get along with everyone, not based on talent and although Arthur's had more than a few close calls with Tomas, he can't seem to stop working with him. 

"Arthur!" Tomas screeches, tugging on Alice's arm and she goes to kiss both of Arthur's cheeks in greeting. 

"It's so nice to meet you," she says, smiling widely.

"You as well," he replies and she tilts her head to take him in from top to bottom, before she walks over to examine the board he's set up. 

"She likes you," Tomas says delightfully, as if he's running a dating service and not a criminal team of dream-robbers.

"She doesn't know me," Arthur says. 

"Ah yes, but no one really does, do we?" 

Tomas winks at him and goes over to explain some of the details to Alice. Arthur watches as Tomas chats animatedly with her, touching at her elbow and lower back in a way that says, _yes, I'm brilliant and want to sleep with you_. 

Arthur should know. 

They get to work in stages. Arthur briefs them all as much as possible before scurrying off to pick up some paperwork from the local government officials. He stops to get lunch, eating a crepe filled with spinach and feta as he texts Ariadne back. 

An hour after he returns, Eames shows up. 

He's wearing the ugliest shade of brown Arthur's ever seen. It manages to be taupe and khaki and _hideous_ all at the same time, shouting out a steadfast need of making Arthur's eyes bleed at the earliest most convenience. The horrid outfit is topped off with a gorgeous green, paisley tie that makes Arthur's knees weak just thinking about. He's just as broad as before, shoulders filling out his button up and his arms straining against the material. Arthur knows the intricate details of those biceps and when Tomas goes to shake his hand, Arthur tracks the movement. 

There's three days worth of stubble on Eames' face and Arthur can see the faint imprint from his reading glasses on the bridge of his nose. Faintly, Arthur wonders what Eames was reading on the flight over or if he was pouring over the clues Arthur had unwrapped and left waiting for Eames to discover. When Eames smooths down his tie, Arthur has to take a subtle deep breath. 

As usual, Eames looks as if he's been born from Arthur's fantasies and nightmares. 

Tomas pulls him into a hug and manly grunting commences, chattering about _that lovely time in Prague_. Eames looks polite enough, laughing although his attention is not fully into it, he fools Tomas anyway. Arthur stands by the white board, watching Tomas introduce Alice, who looks as if she might faint from the force of Eames' charm. Arthur bites his bottom lip to keep from smiling because this isn't even Eames at his best. 

Mostly because Eames can't seem to keep his eyes off Arthur. 

It's both comforting and nerve wracking. Arthur's dressed for the occasion; the YSL suit he's wearing is one of Eames' favorites. It's a deep pinstripe that hugs the lines of his body as if the tailor knew just how inappropriate Eames' thoughts of Arthur were when he wore the suit. But it's also a three piece suit, suspenders hold the piece together and the coarse weight of the tie at the hollow of his throat makes Arthur feel safe. 

Whether Eames' attention is being paid in rage, cool indifference or love, this suit will guide Arthur through the end of it with some semblance of his sanity still intact. 

"And you know Arthur, of course," Tomas says, gesturing with his hands to where Arthur's still standing by the board. 

Eames tilts his head and smiles slightly. It's a honest smile but beyond that, it conveys no other emotion for Arthur decipher. 

"Arthur, darling," Eames says, inflection unreadable. 

Arthur nods back, keeping eye contact with him until Tomas claps Eames on the back and turns him physically toward Alice to talk about a plan they've tentatively thought up. 

Arthur turns back to his work space, his hands drawn to his pocket where he keeps his keys.

<3<3<3

Alice and Tomas finally leave Eames alone, sending him over for more information about the mark's closest friends and family. Arthur doesn't get up from his chair, holding his ground as Eames approaches his desk in long strides.

"Arthur," he says neutrally. 

Arthur doesn't know what to do but offer him a chair. There are dossiers in front of him but they blur because Eames is close enough _to smell_ and it takes the breath right out of Arthur's lungs, fills him up with lead and makes him dizzy. 

"Afternoon, Eames," he says in the same tone, not risking a glance at Eames' face, and clears his throat. The personal business between them can wait. They have a job to do. 

"We have little to work with—" He starts to pass a folder over to Eames when Eames' finger wrap tightly around his fingers, boarding on painful. Arthur is forced to look up from the folder and meet Eames' gaze. Eames face has a flush on his cheeks, eyes hard but emotive and Arthur feels like all the air has stilled around them. 

Arthur lets his hand go slack underneath Eames' gripping fingers. 

"Arthur," Eames grinds out, a perfect picture of barely concealed emotion. "I just want you to know, for the sake of professionalism—" 

Arthur inhales sharply. 

"–that I'm literally minutes away from snapping and either killing you with my bare hands or fucking you right here on this very desk."

He seems to grit around the words, as if he's honestly holding himself back from using his brute strength to muscle Arthur to one end or another. It's painfully attractive. 

Arthur clears his throat. "I take it you received my package." 

"Ah yes," Eames says as if they're having polite conversation. "You and your ridiculous puzzles." 

Arthur looks away but doesn't remove his hand from Eames' clutches. He doesn't want to do this here, not with Alice and Tomas watching. The thought alone makes his skin crawl. 

"I found your paper trail," Eames says. 

Arthur says nothing in response but his pulse jumps underneath Eames' searching fingers. 

"I couldn't help but notice," he continues and Arthur stares at their hands, "that Ariadne isn't here." 

This time, Arthur meets Eames' unwavering gaze with a look of his own. Eames blinks, blankness settling over his face before it twists into something else, flashing over his face in an instant. 

"Tomas!" Eames shouts, shooting up from his chair and twisting around. "Arthur and I have to go check something out, be a doll and lock up for us?" 

With that, Eames turns around with an icy glare and starts toward the door. Arthur pulls on his suit jacket automatically, going through the motions of packing up without really any effort. It's six-to-ten-and-pick-em' whether Eames and he will end up trying to kill each other in the next few hours but Arthur can do nothing but follow. 

For the first time, in a long time, Arthur simply follows.

<3<3<3

Eames hails a cab.

He opens the door and nods, as if nothing is painfully amiss, and Arthur slides into the cab because what else is there to do? He murmurs his address to the cabbie and watches Eames as he watches Arthur with a look that Arthur can't decode. 

The ride to the apartment is blissfully short, if completely silent. 

When the cab drives away, Eames is staring at the building, looking a bit lost. 

"Eames," he says, because this is getting a little ridiculous. They're emotionally incompetent, not mute. 

"This is an apartment." 

Arthur frowns. "Yes." 

Eames looks at him, brow furrowed and mouth twisted up at the corners. He glances at the apartment door and then back at Arthur before digging into his pocket and dragging out the key Arthur agonized over for a full forty-five minutes. 

When Eames shoves the key into the lock and turns it, he wildly looks back at Arthur. "This key fits into the lock." 

Arthur shakes his head because Eames' tone is bewildered and _for fuck's sake_ what the hell is going on?

"Eames—" 

But then Eames is kissing him, it's a surge to get there,but Eames backs off immediately. Their lips crush together and then smooth into a kiss that hooks into Arthur's gut like a strong left hook. Eames mouths at Arthur's lips like he's not real, like he might disappear any moment. Arthur presses back, opening his mouth for more and whimpering when Eames pulls back to stare wide-eyed into his face. 

"You gave me a key to an apartment." 

Arthur feels his face heat. "I live here." 

"You live here or _you live here_?" 

Eames honestly looks surprised. Arthur feels irritated. "What did you think the paper trail meant?" 

"I hadn't the foggiest," Eames says with a smile that says, _I thought you filled up a house for someone else_ or _I thought you found someone to replace Mal and her name wasn't Eames_. 

"But that doesn't make any sense, Eames," Arthur says, his hands clutching at Eames' face and wanting to kiss him again. "Why would I—" 

"I don't want to talk anymore," Eames says quietly. 

Arthur swallows into another brief kiss. 

This time, when Eames pulls away he turns the key in the lock and steps over the threshold without looking back

<3<3<3

They never make it to the bedroom. Instead, Eames fucks Arthur on the breakfast bar and leaves him spread out and panting after they've both come, his skin sticking to the marble. Eames kisses down Arthur's side as he pulls out, humming something soft and non-existent underneath his breath. He moves around the countertop when he's done, reaching for a kitchen towel and pulling the orange juice out of Arthur's fridge before Arthur can even catch his breath enough to sit up.

"Eames, that's disgusting," Arthur gasps out, staring at the used condom, wet with come and lube, sticking to his newly polished hardwood. He's distracted from everything else but Eames as he chuckles softly, coming around the counter to slide in between Arthur's dangling legs. Eames is drinking juice out of the carton, the towel in his other hand running across Arthur's stomach to clean up the drying come there. 

He looks so happy, a soft smile that adds to the look of wonder on his face, that Arthur has to … it's like, quiet, torrential panic wells up inside of him and Arthur can't help himself. 

He stills Eames hand, their positions reversed from the warehouse. 

"It's just a key," Arthur whispers. 

There's a beat before Arthur looks up, not moving his head but just shifting his gaze to peer at Eames through his lashes. Eames doesn't look hurt—his face doesn't resemble the way it did when he fucked Arthur over a pair of Mombasa tickets so long ago or how Arthur imagined his face was carefully broken during their phone conversation. He just looks ... happy. 

"Eames," Arthur chokes out because his throat feels like it might swell closed. But Eames shakes his head and leans in, their hands still together on Arthur's stomach. 

"It's not." 

Arthur blinks slowly, trying to take in Eames' half smile that's making his chest ache. The feeling reminds him of when the weather shifts too abruptly, or when Arthur travels to extremes, and his older wounds ache in a way that's almost calming and unnerving in their memories. It feels exactly like that, the dull ache spreading into his chest of wounds that will never fully leave him. 

He presses closer, planting kisses over Arthur's cheeks and trailing them all over his face. "It's not just a key, Arthur darling," he whispers against Arthur's lips. "Don't be silly." 

Arthur thinks the word _silly_ is an absolutely ridiculous word and he wants to tell Eames that, he wants to tell him that _it is_ absolutely only a key and _Christ, can't he just stop pushing for one fucking second_? 

Instead, he lets Eames kiss him on the kitchen counter until they're both hard again because Eames' lips are soft and demanding, pulling at Arthur's thoughts like loose yarn until they unravel into nothing but needy moans. Arthur's dick is too sensitive from Eames' rough hand but it doesn't stop them from rutting against each other. 

"I'm going to fuck you against every surface of this stuffy, French flat," Eames says, sucking a mark that Arthur will bitch about in the mirror later. "You insufferable man." 

"Shut up," Arthur moans at a particularly desperate slide of Eames' dick against his own. God, if they're not careful, they'll chafe. 

"Come on." 

Arthur means to argue, but Eames is already lifting him up off the counter and Arthur has no choice but to wrap his legs around Eames' thick waist or fall on his bare ass. Eames swallows whatever protest Arthur was about to make by bringing their lips together and fucking his mouth with pretty clear intent. 

"Let me go," Arthur says when Eames slips a finger inside of Arthur's ass, still carrying him down the hallway, bumping into walls and generally not being efficient at all. "Eames—" 

"Never," Eames says, playful smile stretching across his face as another finger slips into Arthur's stretched hole and practically impales him. "Darling, I'll never let you go." 

Eames laughs after he delivers the line, probably because Arthur's face feels like it's twisting between annoyance and pleasure. He curls his arms around Eames' shoulders and tightens his legs because _holy fuck_ , Eames' fingers feel so incredibly deep at this angle. 

Arthur makes a few attempts to glare at Eames but they all fail. Eames' fingers continue to drive up inside of him, the rough slide of the digits is almost too much with only Eames' spit and the left over lube from the condom but it's enough to have Arthur painfully hard and moaning into the side of Eames' neck. They finally navigate down the hallway and Eames fumbles with the doorknob, causing his finger to prod at Arthur's prostate and the result is Eames almost falling over when Arthur can do nothing but sink his teeth into the strained muscles of Eames' shoulders. 

"Take it easy," Eames curses, stumbling them into the bedroom and making a beeline for Arthur's bed. 

Arthur latches onto Eames' neck, sucking a bruise onto the bitten skin until Eames moans and drops him onto the bed. "Just fuck me," Arthur spits out, pulling Eames down to cover his body. Their kisses are nearly frantic, sucking on tongues and biting lips as their bodies grind against each other. 

"Bloody fucking hell," Eames mutters as Arthur pushes their cocks together. He's fumbling into the nightstand with his left hand and Arthur enjoys the pleasure rolling between them as he runs his own hands all over Eames' body. "Would you just—" 

"There is time for pleasantries later," Arthur says. Eames tries to look smug as he finally grabs a condom and the tube of lube but Arthur doesn't give him anytime to complete the leer. He hooks his leg around Eames and uses the awkward balance of Eames' upper body to flip them over with a grunt. Eames yelps, cursing in surprise when he lands on his back in the middle of the bed. 

"Shut up," Arthur says, snatching the condom wrapper from Eames' hand and it’s on Eames' leaking cock as soon as physically possible.

"Patience is usually considered a virtue," Eames replies, relaxing into the pillows. Arthur rolls his eyes, taking the lube from Eames and pouring it over his condom-covered dick. 

Eames hisses as Arthur slicks him up and wastes no time working it inside of him, sinking down all the way on the first go. Arthur throws his head back at the sensation, riding out the intensity of the stretch, of being so damn full after so long and moans, his hips twitching to thrust down and take more but he settles for just raking his fingernails down Eames' chest and cursing at how fucking fantastic it feels. 

" _Fucking Christ_ ," Eames moans out, curling up from the bed to keep Arthur still. He practically cradles him, one arm wrapped around his shoulder and down his back, while the other is steady at Arthur's hips. "Arthur—" 

Arthur just pants, feeling the deep stretch of Eames inside of him and clutches at Eames shoulders until he relaxes back into the bed, giving Arthur room to swivel his hips. He starts out small, Eames' fingers digging into his bone, until Eames is whining and thrusting up off the bed and practically begging him to take it. 

"Yeah," Arthur whispers, lifting off of Eames only to drop back down to Eames' rolling hips. "Oh god, _yes_." 

Eames grins, wide and self-satisfied in his utter shamelessness until Arthur leans forward, taking Eames deeper and swallowing his moans with Arthur's tongue. It doesn't take long, the pace brutal with both of their hips meeting with such forceful need. There's not much precision but the angle allows for Eames to hit Arthur's prostate with little difficulty on every stroke, causing Arthur to choke out moans that Eames teases out with grabby hands and an eager tongue. Arthur feels the tight roll of pleasure building just as Eames begins his litany of curses, mostly in combination with Arthur's name and other unintelligible bullshit and endearments that usually signal his impending climax. 

"Eames," he groans, frantic, into Eames mouth. 

Eames wraps a hand around his cock unexpectedly, stokes once and slams home, sending them both into an orgasm that thunders through them. It seems impossible to come this hard so close to his last orgasm but he does, the pleasure hitting him to the point of pain. Eames continues to fuck up into him in jerky twitching of his hips, almost too sensitive but it's too good for him to stop, Arthur knows how much of a glutton he is for this.

He collapses against Eames when he tugs at Arthur's body to send him colliding with Eames' embrace, cock still stuffed up inside of him.

"Well, fuck," Arthur says into Eames' sweaty skin. He tries to pull away but Eames is holding fast. "I'm going to cramp," he warns. 

Eames grumbles, going to pull out with an unhappy groan. The condom and, once again, gets tossed in the general direction of the floor for Arthur to step on in the morning. Arthur makes a noise that could be interpreted as protest but also sounds like a whine. He wants to fight Eames on their position because he really hates being the little spoon but he's too exhausted. Eames manhandles him, eyes half closed and kissing at every available inch of Arthur's skin until Arthur lets him do whatever he wants. 

They’re falling asleep with Arthur on his back, arms curled around Eames shoulders as Eames tries to suffocate himself into the skin of Arthur's neck. He's practically crushing Arthur's chest but he refuses to move, only satisfied if he's covering a great deal of Arthur's body with his bulk. Arthur's convinced he won't ever sleep like this, even if he is blissed out from two orgasms in an appallingly short time period and a fantastic fuck. 

However, he finds himself drifting off anyway, Eames' snores in his ear and his fingers absently tracing the sprawling ink on Eames' back.

<3<3<3

"Why didn't you call me for it?"

Arthur looks up from the mazes to see Ariadne looking winded. He leans back in his chair and tries not to convey his surprise. She is supposed to be in class right now, not loitering in his warehouse and certainly scaring his current team with her haughty looks and pubescent scarves. Thankfully, Eames is out tailing the mark. Arthur has neglected to tell Ariadne that Eames is in Paris, let alone the fact that Eames cancelled his hotel reservation over grapefruit and toast that morning.

He hasn't told her anything and he's not ready to examine why. 

"I don't work with children," he says with a tilt of his head, making sure his collar covers the amount of purpling bruises on his neck. Ariadne pouts and jumps to sit on his desk, facing him and crinkling his blueprints with her ass. 

"You used to work with Eames all the time." 

Arthur allows himself a half smile. "This job didn't need you." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

He knows she's being careful with her words here. He knows from the swing of her shins by his forearm that she's trying to read him very carefully and not let her feelings show through. But Ariadne isn't an Arthur. She's not an Eames or a Cobb either. She's just Ariadne, no matter how many times she tries to be something different. 

"It means," he says as he faces her properly and lowers his voice, "that this job wasn't important or complicated enough to pull you out of school. This is a cake walk, albeit Tomas is a little crazy, and it's insulting to your talents." 

"Liar. You think it's too dangerous." Her eyes sparkle with pride and when she smiles, she's blushing. "Why'd you take it then?" 

Arthur shrugs. "I like Paris." 

It's not a lie but Ariadne sees it for a shade of itself—a non-truth. She knows about the apartment, she's not been there but she knows it exists. 

"Arthur-"

"Get back to class," Arthur says mildly, turning toward his desk and ignoring the hurt that slides unabashedly across her face. "Or I'll tell Miles."

There is a small silence before she sticks her tongue out and leaves the warehouse with a threat of showing up tomorrow, skipping all of her classes to do narcotics and have unprotected sex with unsuitable sperm donors, if he doesn't call her later.

Eames walks in not twenty minutes later, tries to fondle him when Tomas isn't looking and generally is a nuisance to productivity. 

It's annoyingly fantastic.

<3<3<3

Everything is going smoothly.

That is, until Arthur finds out Eames is running a double con. 

"You've got to be kidding me," Arthur says, when he gets the information. Apparently, Tomas finished a very lucrative job just days before starting this one and someone wants what he knows. It only takes a few more phone calls and hacking a half-a-dozen government clearance codes to infer who hired Eames. 

He really means to yell at Eames about endangering his life, not telling Arthur exactly what is going on in the first place and probably start a sentence with, _"and you wonder why you have a reputation that feeds my abandonment issues"_ and probably ends with, _"fucking told you so, Ariadne"._ Honestly, yelling at Eames is pretty much one of his favorite things to do, next to fucking him or shooting him. However, when Arthur leaves his office and walks out into the living room, he sees Eames on a step ladder with several high-priced editions scattered on the floor and power tools. 

Goddamn power tools. 

"What the hell are you doing?" 

Eames is holding up something sleek and black. He looks over his shoulder, crooked teeth showing as he smiles and says, "installing a telly." 

It's startling how even the simplest of ideas from Eames can inspire so much rage inside of Arthur. He takes a few calming breaths but it doesn't seem to help. There are first fucking editions ... on the fucking floor. 

"Why, why are you installing a television in my bookshelf?" 

Eames keeps smiling. "You hate not being able to watch the news." 

"So I read the newspaper, Eames." 

"Ah," Eames says wiggling his finger and juggling a screw driver. "But you do it with that wrinkle between your forehead, you know, the one that looks like you're trying to remember why you didn't just nuke everyone when you had the chance." 

This is why he hasn't told Ariadne about Eames yet. He might kill him before their _thing_ even begins to count as emotional growth and goes straight to unfortunate mistakes motivated by Arthur's deep-seated issues with reality. 

"See," he says, "that makes me think this is about something else. Eames, why are you putting a television on my bookshelves?" 

"It's right strange you have this many bookshelves anyway. A telly is supposed to go in a living room! It's absolutely mental what you've got going on," Eames says evasively. 

"This is about football, isn't it." 

Eames starts to whistle, dropping several screws and pushing the button on the drill in rhythm with whatever tune he's whistling. 

"I'm trying really hard not to draw my weapon right now," Arthur growls out. 

"Why's that pet?" 

Eames holds down the drill until the truly unholy sound is filling up the space and Arthur has to yell to hear himself. He's still standing on the other side of the room for the sake of everyone's safety.

"Because normal people do not _draw they're fucking firearms_ in their _homes_!" Arthur screams. 

Eames looks thoughtfully over his shoulder, hands still holding up a piece of the television, and blows a kiss. Arthur feels a vein in his forehead bulge. 

"Is this the wrong time to mention how your domesticity makes me want to rim you?" 

Arthur palms his pistol but refuses, on principal, to take it out. He turns and leaves the living room, drill still buzzing next to Eames' irritating face. 

"Can we have make-up sex now?" Eames yells after him. "The domestication bit wasn't complete rubbish, darling! I really do want to lick your arse! You've gone and given me a stiffy just thinking about it!" 

Arthur slams the door to the study because it's better than putting a hole through his wall.

<3<3<3

They do end up talking about the double-crossing business but Eames' plan for extracting the information from Tomas is solid and Arthur only yells a little bit. The result is Arthur spending twenty minutes shoving his cock down Eames' throat in the warehouse bathroom and letting Eames jerk himself off all over Arthur's shoes.

They've yet to discuss the television.

At eleven forty-five, Arthur gets up to leave. 

"Lunch?" Eames asks, with kebab all over his face. 

Arthur pretends not to be distracted by Eames' licking sauce off his fingers. "Yes... with Ariadne." 

There is a moment where Eames looks like his face might go sad and shut down but Arthur steps closer and lays his hand on the back of Eames' neck. The stiffness in Eames' neck relaxes as soon as Arthur registers it was ever there but his hand stays, idly playing with Eames' slightly gelled hair. 

Eames wipes his mouth. "Darling," he says conversationally. "Bring me back a pastry, yeah?" 

When Arthur walks out of the office, his cock is half hard and it doesn’t surprise him one bit that _not_ arguing with Eames turns him on just as much as any knock-down-drag-out fight of theirs does. 

Lunch is Thai food because Ariadne has a craving for noodles and food so spicy she will cry. It's something that Arthur does not understand the appeal to but he meets her inside and orders the mildest dish on the menu. 

"So," she starts, having just devoured a dumpling. "I got an email from Eames last night." 

"Did you?" 

"Wanna know what I found out?" 

She's drinking water like she's gearing up to do some serious damage and Arthur wonders if they're going to have a bit of a tantrum right here. He really, really hates airing his personal business in public. 

"Ariadne—"

"You have the same IP address." 

Arthur swallows around a dumpling. "He didn't tell you?" 

"Go fuck yourself," she says, flailing her arms around and pointing her chopsticks at him like she plans to come across the table any minute. "Of course he didn't _tell me_! You're all weird and reserved and care about things and not others and—the poor guy is probably insanely confused and terrified you're going to go through another mid-life crisis and kick him to the curb again." 

Arthur blinks. 

"Don't look at me like that," she barks.

"I'm sorry, what?" 

There is a very embarrassing flutter in his belly that Arthur attributes to the warmth of the dumplings and not the fact that Eames, who takes extreme pleasure in letting everyone know his business, is carefully protecting Arthur's privacy. It's not a declaration because it's better than that—it's _more_ than that. 

"Christ, it's like having a conversation with a twelve--boy. Are you regressing?" 

"He installed a TV," Arthur finds himself saying. "In my bookshelves." 

"Did you shoot him?" 

Ariadne honestly looks curious and Arthur has to look away because he's about to make a mini-declaration of his own. He feels his cheeks heat. 

"I don't want to draw my sidearm there," he says quietly. "I just ... it's—"

"It's your home and you love the fuck out of him." 

Their dinner comes and they eat, carefully talking about Ariadne's life because she can't stop smiling like a crazy person. Arthur walks her back to campus, listening as she prattles on about a new solution that Yusuf has been working on. 

He takes a cab back to work.

<3<3<3

The job goes off without a hitch.

Eames' job goes only as well as expected. 

Alice is already on a plane when Tomas shows up at the warehouse. He's obviously seething with rage, a bit manic, but completely unarmed and Arthur doesn't bother to get up from his wiping down hard drives. 

"Who the fuck do you think you are!" Tomas yells at Eames who was, until three seconds ago, trying to convince Arthur to fuck him over the desk like a naughty school boy. He just swivels around in his chair to face Tomas. 

"I'm trying to get laid here, mate!" 

Tomas looks relatively surprised by this information. 

"You fucking sold me out!" 

Eames tilts his head. "This is true." 

Tomas storms closer to him, waving his hands like he has no control over them and has clearly no idea what to do with Eames' reaction. Arthur tries not to laugh because it really is impolite. It's obvious that Tomas has little to no experience being anybody's mark. 

"How could you?" 

"Oh please, bugger off," Eames says lightly. "It's not like I've sold out my mum, yeah? It's not your fault you've been double-crossed by your unreliable forger. Besides, I already took care of the tail my benefactor put on you. Mighty big gun and all but no brains behind the sights, that's for sure." 

Once again, Tomas looks extremely surprised. He stops waving his arms. "I'm not going to die because of this?" 

Eames shrugs. "I might kill you for preventing me getting my leg over." 

"Huh," Tomas says, all the melodrama melting out of him. "Well, cheers." 

With that, he leaves. 

"You could have offered him half your share," Arthur says from his place wiping prints off the keyboard. 

"I'll offer you half my share if you spank my bottom and let me call you Professor." 

The leer is very much reflected in the tone. 

"Only half, Mr. Eames?" 

But Arthur's already rising, straightening his own tie and cupping the growing bulge in Eames' trousers. Eames smiles back, filthy with mischief and trusting into his hand with overeagerness that has Arthur's mouth watering. 

"Yeah," Eames says, "I've already promised the other half and I wouldn't want to get in trouble, now would I, Professor?" 

Arthur allows himself to smile as he spins Eames around and bends him over the desk.

<3<3<3

Arthur is forcing Eames to be the small spoon.

"You told Tomas we were sleeping together," Arthur says into the darkness. It's too early yet to go to bed but he's relatively exhausted and after one more orgasm, he could probably fall asleep without complaint. 

"I implied it." 

Arthur pinches his nipple in response. 

"You're not going to freak out?" Eames says, honestly casual but not surprised. 

Arthur lets his hand wander over the expanse of Eames' chest. "I'm not sure yet," Arthur says, kisses down his neck. "Are you going to tell me about Beijing?" 

Eames back doesn't stiffen. He doesn't stop Arthur's hands. He presses back into Arthur's body, cat-like, and moans softly at Arthur's absent exploration. Arthur could map Eames' body from memory, place all the scars and tattoos as souvenirs from countries that wanted a part of Eames to keep. There is some new history to Eames body that Arthur doesn't know the full story. He knows what his research has told him, just as there are some places on Arthur's body, not so new, that Eames can only put together through information and not with true knowledge. But where Eames accepts this, possibly embraces this part of Arthur, Arthur can't help but loathe the places that have had an impact of Eames without his permission—that have taken something that is rightfully his to keep. 

"I'm not," Eames says, "because you're not coming with me." 

Arthur stills his hands. "I'm not?" 

"No, darling," he says, pushing back and whining until Arthur's hands start to move on their own accord. "But I'll be back." 

"You'll be back?" 

Eames turns over to face him. The lines around his eyes are soft, his smile secretive and flirty but his hands sure and kind. Arthur blinks into the darkness and when Eames kisses him, hungry and tender, he just kisses back.

<3<3<3

Two days later, Eames already in Beijing, a brand new bed shows up at the apartment.

It's a huge, four-posted bed with storage space that makes Arthur's mouth water as he watches them install it. It's sprawling, fit for royalty and Arthur trances the newly stretched sheets over the top. 

Only then does he find out that it's anchored to the ground. 

And comes with fucking restraints.

<3<3<3

Arthur gets shot the Saturday after Eames leaves for China. He's standing in the local shop, just around the corner, when some punk tries to rob the place and his gun accidentally goes off and shoots Arthur in arm.

When Eames hears, he laughs until he's almost crying because really, Arthur would get shot in a crime he's not even involved in. Arthur grumbles across the line, cursing and spitting at him in general misery while the nurse yells at him for talking on his cell phone.

"I could be dying you know," he says petulantly into the phone. Eames wheezes in laughter across the line.

The nurse knocks the phone out of his hand before he can say anything else and he's still smiling when she puts her gloved hands into the wound to feel around for damage. She's fucking _heartless_.

When Ariadne hears about his bullet wound, she goes fucking ballistic. 

"Fucking goddamn martyr!" She screams at him from the door to his hospital bed. Her hair is a mess, she looks like she might have killed a large farm animal to get here by the state of her clothes and she looks nowhere near as calm or comforting as Eames' laughter had been.

"For the record," Arthur says, trying to exude calm. "I did nothing to deserve this." 

"I will fucking shank you myself if you don't stop talking … like fucking yesterday." 

Arthur clicks his morphine drip. "Low intelligence crime," he mumbles. "Kids these days ..." 

Ariadne's furious face is the last thing he sees before he sleeps.

<3<3<3

His cellphone rings in the middle of the night.

"Arthur," he says groggily into the mouthpiece, his voice loud in the quiet of the hospital room. 

"Hey." 

Arthur tries to sit up and muffles a groan. "Hey Phil," he says softly. "What's up?" 

"Not a lot, Dad said you got shot... again," the sarcasm in her voice is undeniably Mal. Arthur beams into the darkness. "Were you doing anything illegal?" 

"Actually, nothing at all." 

"No shit?" 

"Don't curse," Arthur admonishes. Phillipa snorts over the line. "How's school?" 

"Boring. When can I come live with you?" 

Arthur laughs. "I'm not sure your dad would like that." 

"I'm old enough," she whines over the phone. "I promise not to get in the way of your boyfriend." 

"He's not—" Arthur stops himself. He's never lied to Phillipa before. He sees no reason to lie now, even if it could be true. "I'm not sure what to call him." 

Phillipa makes a surprised sound in the back of her throat. "What his name?" 

"Eames," Arthur says matter-of-factly, thankful his voice has no trace of affection or anything else that might embarrass him more. "His name is Eames." 

"Is he there?" 

"No, he's on a job." 

He can hear her scowl over the phone. "He should be with you when you're hurt, no matter how cool the dream is." 

"You only say that because you've never dreamshared before, you don't know how appealing dreams are," he says softly. 

"I"m not a dreamer," she replies stubbornly over the phone. 

"You aren't?" He tries to keep the amusement out of his voice but fails, miserably. God, he loves her a ridiculous amount and even though he wants her desperately to come live with him, he knows that he's not quite ready to live with someone who's like Mal but... _not Mal_ yet. Phillipa is not a projection, she's her own person and even though Arthur knows he's come a long way, he still has to put Phillipa before his own selfishness. 

"Nah," she says over the line. "Wanna hear about school?" 

"Yes, my darling."

<3<3<3

Ariadne spends the next two weeks annoying the ever-loving fuck of him. She breaks into his apartment with Miles' help (because she could have never done it alone) and makes actually getting shot look like a cakewalk. She hovers and whines and yells and stamps her foot and makes him watch really crappy French soap operas.

It's literally worse than water boarding. 

However, Arthur thinks he might feel up to forgiving her as she helps him reorganize his bookshelves biographically and lets him take more painkillers than necessary, just so she can have a date over and they can fuck in the sonic shower. (Ariadne claims it's not Yusuf but Arthur can't get a clear read on Yusuf's passports, so he's not entirely convinced.) 

It's almost midnight and Arthur is considering buying himself a 'get well' present from Smith and Wesson when his phone chirps. 

From **Eames** :  
pick me up? 

Arthur doesn't hesitate to break himself out of Ariadne's jail by crawling out the window and escaping in his pajamas.

It's a very memorial scene at the arrivals gate.

<3<3<3

It's a Tuesday afternoon, a month after Eames has returned from China and Arthur's trying to make an appointment with his tailor when Eames bursts into study and starts speaking very loudly. It's impossible to ignore. Or to hear his ninety-year-old tailor.

"—the most wanted forger in the fucking world, darling."

Arthur blinks. "Gustav, I'm going to have to call you back." 

"Arthur," Eames is standing in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips, looking to Arthur as if he's run a few blocks or at least stolen something of value on the way to the apartment. "I'm part of the team that performed inception." 

"I'm aware." 

"Are you? Darling, I just want to make sure you understand that I am the dog's bollocks."

"I can honestly say that I have no idea what you're talking about," Arthur says and doesn't hide his confusion because he's pretty sure that he's not _supposed_ to know what Eames is saying. 

Eames, for the most part, looks frustrated. He paces the length of the room twice before he comes over, kneeling in front of Arthur and taking both of his hands in his broader ones. Arthur feels lost and tender,and god, he hopes nothing is wrong. 

"Eames-"

He shakes his head. "No, listen to me love because I'm only going to say this once and you're incredibly dense when it comes to feelings. It's like you're allergic or something and I don't blame you, after Mal, but I really need you to pull yourself together." 

"What-"

Arthur opens his mouth but closes it, sound hitting his teeth, when Eames squeezes his hands and he suddenly looks too serious. His eyes are incredibly green. 

"I could have anyone in the world," Eames says firmly. It's not preening. It's a simple statement of facts. "I am rich and handsome and a fabulous shag. But, and this is the important part,-"

Arthur blinks, watching Eames' face. 

"I want you." 

Arthur frowns. "Eames—what-"

"I could have anyone in the world and I want you," he continues with perfect certainty that slaps Arthur in the face. "I could be anywhere in the world, with anyone I fancy and I'm here, in fucking Paris, where there are actual _French people_ with you." 

He feels like he's suddenly back in Mal's lap, the government deal fresh in his bank account—this all feels startlingly familiar. Except, Mal and he never said anything out loud. Nothing like this. Nothing like Eames on his knees in Arthur's study, making the most ridiculous declarations. It hits him like a sucker punch or the butt of a gun. He startles out a laugh. 

Eames arches an eyebrow and for just a moment, he looks hurt. Arthur vehemently never wants to put that face on Eames again. "It's just," Arthur explains softly, "this reminds me of when I told Mal I couldn't be in love with her." 

"Oh?" 

The expression is neutral but Eames is fooling no one. Arthur nods his head and says, "Declarations in Paris." 

They both breathe. 

"Except," he says softly, "this is nothing like that." 

"Right then," Eames replies and he sounds relieved. Arthur hates himself just a little bit. "Cheers." 

"I think this might be the moment when it's appropriate to have sex," Arthur says, deadpan. 

Eames tilts his head. "Ask me to move in."

"To move in here?" 

He doesn't disguise his surprise. Part of him wants to say, _no, this is my space_ but then he looks around at the ratty paperbacks and the alligator shoes, only to realize that Eames is already living here. He knows they bought a larger dresser the other day and Eames had mocked him for the sock braces he had, telling him to move them out of the sock drawer because they belonged with his suspenders as accessories but he just hadn't realized.

"Yes, here," Eames says, biting his lip. "With your weird library-telly room and your hatred of my clothing and all your bloody love for the French—ask me to move in." 

Arthur nods and never gets around to calling Gustav back.

<3<3<3

Arthur comes home from looking at Ariadne's plans for a job that would involve all of them if they decided to take it, to find Eames' eating a bacon sandwich. Rather, a bacon sandwich wrapped in bacon and slathered in mayonnaise.

He's shirtless, hanging over a plate and watching soccer on television from the kitchen. The kitchen light is low, casting a glow on Eames' tanned skin that makes him look extremely beautiful—almost godlike in the light. He crunches into the sandwich, mouth wide over the food and Arthur stares at him from the doorway. Eames shakes his head at something on the screen and runs a hand over one his arms, itching at the black inch of his shoulder.

He's fucking disarming in his beauty.

It's then that Arthur's suddenly struck by the fact that Mal would have loved Eames. Hell, Mal would have rejoiced at him accepting this thing with Eames. 

He stands in the entrance of his home, arguably their home, and knows that this isn't going to be a happy ending. 

There isn't going to be one for them and it's glorious. 

In the future, they'll get shot at all the time, fuck jobs up, take jobs that are meant to kill them—they'll make mistakes and eventually, someone will die. Maybe both of them will die. Maybe someone else will die and it'll tear them apart. Maybe they'll devour each other until there is nothing left but the empty shell of a point man and forger. It's not ... they're not meant to have a happy ending or a normal life. He will carry more than one weapon on his person at all times. Eames will always carry more than one identity—not only in passport photos and Interpol profiles, but inside of him too. Arthur will never have enough control or find the perfect sofa table or forgive Dominick Cobb. Life is messy and skin tight and frustrating and never quite the way Arthur thinks it should be. He's not meant to have a happy ending.

But for once in his life, it doesn't seem to matter.

<3<3<3


End file.
